Lyr Req: Murder Bull (from Wellman and Coltman)

Subject: Lyr Req: Murder Bull
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 Sep 22 - 11:53 PM

Anybody have lyrics to the "Murder Bull" song that Sandy Paton speaks of in this post? B.F. Rowley, the School Superintendent in Mustang OK who sang this song for Sandy, retired in 1990 and died in 1996.
Also note information about the Murder Bull in the book The Longhorns

Thread #85197   Message #1578634
Posted By: Sandy Paton
08-Oct-05 - 03:44 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Vandy Vandy
Subject: RE: Origins: Vandy Vandy

I find "Vandy, Vandy" in two of my Manly Wade Wellman short story collections, Joe. The first is in the classic "Who Fears the Devil" collection. My older copy is a Ballantine Books paperback, 1964. The other is in a later collection, "Owls Hoot in the Daytime and Other Omens; Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman, Volume 5" -- Night Shade Books, San Francisco & Portland, 2003.
    Curiously, the opening sentence of the early printing is : "Nary name that valley had." In the Night Shade printing, that has been changed to read: "That valley hadn't any name." Modernized language for modern readers? I prefer the former.
    Wellman, by the way, was a friend of Obray Ramsey, Byard Ray, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, and other North Carolina traditional artists. His brother, Paul, writes fine western histories (and, occasionally, novels), also well worth investigating.
    I've long felt that Manly's "Silver John" stories would make a great television series. Superstitions, witchcraft, magic, adventure and folklore/folksong. I would have cast the late Paul Clayton as John.
    When I'm not so tired, I'll tell you about another song Manly Wade Wellman included in one of his longer stories. Oh, hell, I'll do it now - briefly.
    Back in 1959, I collected a dramatic western ballad from an ex-rodeo rider in Buffalo, Oklahoma. He had become a teacher, then a principal, and finally the Superintendant of Schools. I did a program in one of his schools, after which we got together in his office and swapped songs. He borrowed my guitar to accompany his songs. Seems his wife wouldn't let him play any of that old stuff since they had achieved upper-middle class status., so his guitar languished in a closet, covered with dust.
    Anyway -- I recorded the western ballad, along with a bunch of other songs he played, on an old Webcor I packed with me on that school tour. The song was about a deadly fight over a bull at a round-up. both contenders were killed, and the witnesses decided to brand the word "MURDER" on the bull's side and turn him loose. That bull roamed the hills, occsionally appearing, a frightening image in the moonlight, with "MURDER" branded on his hide.
    In my later rambles, I managed to lose the tape of B. F. Rowley singing the song for me. Searched all of the western song collections I could find, but never found the song, or even one quite like it. UNTIL, reading recently all of Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John novels, I found one titled "After Dark." There was the ballad! Silver John sings it to a gathering, with this for an introduction: ""Let me try a song they call "Murder Bull." I learnt it from a Texas man who said the thing truly happened in his part of the world."
Wellman's novel was published as copyright 1980. I had heard the ballad in 1959.
    Of course, Wellman is no longer living, and I had no tune for the song. So, I did what any reasonably smart old folkie would do. I knew Bob Coltman had written a fine tune for "Vandy, Vandy," so I sent him the text from Wellman's book, with one additional verse fragment from my own memory of the song (which Bob brilliantly reconstructed), and in a few days, I received a tape of the ballad sung by Bob to an excellent tune of his own making. A most satisfying end to a long and frustrating search for a lost ballad.
    There you go. And now, goodnight. It's nearly 4 a.m.!
    Sandy

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Murder Bull (from Wellman and Coltman)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Sep 22 - 12:02 AM

I found this in Dark Worlds Quarterly Magazine:

The MURDER Bull

The MURDER Bull doesn’t appear in any of Wellman’s stories but is featured in a scary song that John sings in After Dark (1980). The song tells of two cattlemen in Texas who murdered each other in 1884 over an unbranded bull calf. The other cowboys branded the word MURDER on the animal and drove it away. The bull wanders and grows to become “big and terrible”. The last two stanzas of the song explain what happens to those who see the MURDER BULL:

While you sit in there, watching
The fire that dulls and dies,
He’ll come up to the window
With MURDER in his eyes.

Then turn and look the other way
And hold your frightened breath,
For if you face the Murder Bull
His eyes will give you death.”

The Little Black Train

Like the MURDER Bull, another portentous phantom is the Little Black Train, which takes the souls of the damned to Hell.

I heard a voice a warning,
A message from on high,
“Go put your house in order
For thou shalt surely die.

Tell all your friends a long farewell
And get your business right —
The little black train is rolling in
To call for you tonight.

In “The Little Black Train”(F&SF, August 1954) it is Donie Carawan who must worry about the phantom express, for her sins: seducing a lover to kill her husband. Even selling the railroad she inherits cannot stop the Little Black Train for its rails are as unearthly as the train. Robert Bloch used a similar legend in his Hugo winning story “That Hell-Bound Train”(1958).

Subject: ADD: Murder Bull (from Wellman and Coltman)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Sep 22 - 12:15 AM

And from Wellman's John the Balladeer:

“Friends," I said, “let me try a song they call ‘Murder Bull.’ I learnt it from a Texas man, who said the thing truly happened in
his part of the world."
I struck a chord, then another chord, to make sure I was sure of the tune, and started out:
         

"When the night is dark and stormy
And the ghost wind moans and chills,
They tell about the Murder Bull
That roams the Texas hills.

“It was at that big roundup
In eighteen eighty-four,
Two riders claimed a stray bull calf
On the old Red River shore.

"He wasn't much to fight for,
But Jillson's hate was black;
He fired a shot through Graham's chest
And it came out the back.

"Graham drew his bowie knife
And struck in Jillson's side,
And both fell down, and no one knew
Which was the first that died."

"Ohh,” I heard a pretty-dressed lady say from the front log as I went on:

"The others at the roundup,
They gathered round and said,
"There's none of us will claim that calf,
Now both of them are dead.”

"A running iron they heated,
The calf they roped and tied,
And in big, burning letters
Spelled MURDER on his hide.”

I heard the whole listening bunch draw in their breath.

“They drove him out to roam the hills,
And when his time was full,
He grew up big and terrible,
The maverick Murder Bull.

"And many a year's been born and died,
But still he prowls at night
With MURDER branded on his flank
In letters red and bright.

"If you live in East Texas,
Be always on your guard,
Because some night the bull may come,
Walk right into your yard.

"While you sit in there, watching
The fire that dulls and dies,
He’ll come up to your window
With MURDER in his eyes.

"Then turn and look the other way
And hold your frightened breath,
For if you face the Murder Bull
His eyes will give you death.”

I finished and laid my palm on the guitar strings to make them quiet. Then I bowed and waited.
There was dead silence all over, for while I counted about half a dozen ticks. Then they broke out with their racket. I walked off, and Brooke Altic met me as I came down the steps from the stage. He grabbed my hand in his thin, strong one and shook it.
         
“That was magnificent, John,” he said. “Listen to them applaud.”

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Murder Bull (from Wellman and Coltman)
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Sep 22 - 12:37 PM

The Silver John version quoted above has all but one of the verses I had from Sandy Paton. Memory fails, but I think the missing verse was the incomplete one Sandy asked me to reconstruct as best I could. It comes after "They drove him out to roam the hills ... The maverick Murder Bull." Here it is:

They'd tell a tale of meeting him
Up on some bald hillside,
A ghost white bull in pale moonlight
With MURDER on his hide.

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Murder Bull (from Wellman and Coltman)
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 18 Sep 22 - 10:27 AM

Only peripherally related, but perhaps worth mentioning; a complete luxury edition of the Silver John stories has supposedly been in production for two years. I paid $100 in October 2020. The publisher haffnerpress.com emails updates occasionally but I'm still waiting for the book to appear.