Taim Sinte ar do Thuamba first written in Irish Gaelic by an anonymous author. This poem and it's notable English translation by Frank O'Connor would be set to music many times. It's most well known under it's English name: 'I Am Stretched On Your Grave'.
The first notation for The Cruel Mother in folk song collections. This song is often conflated with and probably related to the later Maid and the Palmer ballad from the latter half of the 18th century. This song describes a mother who has murdered her children rather than face the consequences of bearing children out of wedlock being confronted by the spirits of her dead children. They are not kind and leave her indespair after telling her that she will go to Hell when she dies, and they will be in Heaven. In some versions she dies from the shock of the encounter, in others she commits suicide, in other she survives but not further information is given.
The murder ballad The Maid and the Palmer portrays an unwed mother who has murdered several infants rather than reveal her illicit affairs. Earlier versions hint at incestual abuse as the cause of her pregnancies and the earliest versions make it very explicit. The song contains strong themes of the supernatural and a lot of moralizing, but in the cracks of that narrative we can see the tragedy of a woman forced to bear children she does not want in a culture that will judge her just as harshly for having children out of wedlock, regardless of their father's identity.
Twa Sisters tells a story of jealousy between siblings, almost always over a mutual lover or suitor. People must find it relatable because this song, Child Ballad 10/Roud Index #8/TSB No. A 38, clearly gets around. Across Northern Europe there are hundreds of variations. And that number doesn't include the numerous variations that crossed the Atlantic Ocean. The creepy supernatural twist makes it all the more memorable.
In Hogstow, not far from Shrewsbury England, a miller's apprentice murdered Anne Nichols, his lover of 2 years. Anne discovered that she was pregnant with his child and her family pressured him to marry her. He decided to kill her instead. A tale as old as time, apparently. This crime inspired The Bloody Miller which in turn inspired murder ballads on both sides of the Atlantic. The date and basic description of the murder are corroborated in the diary of a local minister.
A specific date is given in the song Greenland Whale Fisheries, and this is the earliest I saw in the recorded lyrics. This song gives a fictional but accurate account of the life of sailors on board commercial whaling vessels.
An estimated date for the crime that The Gosport Tragedy is based on suggested by writer David C. Fowler in his 1979 book The Gosport Tragedy: Story Of A Ballad. No specific name is given for the victim so more concrete details are impossible to confirm. Fowler was able to research the movements of the HMS Bedford through British military records and they correspond with these dates.
The Bloody Gardener relates the brutal murder of a woman in a murder for hire scheme engineered by her future mother-in-law. This theme is less common but whispers of the same kind of unhealthy incestual relationships portrayed in The Maid and the Palmer. This seems to be a fictional though not implausible series of events
On this date in Wethersfield, Connecticut, the patriarch of the Beadle family took the lives of his wife and five children, ranging in age from 6-11 years in the predawn darkness. He implemented a carefully crafted plan so that the maid would be gone from the house while he brutally murdered his family with an axe. After they were gone he took his own life with two pistol shots to the head as the sun rose. Among his papers friends found his will, which detailed how he had planned this event for three years and believed that God had ordained his actions.
This is the earliest documented familicide in the history of the United States of America.
The year referenced in the legal documents indicting the accused for the murder of Omi Wise. Her birth date is unknown due to her orphan status, and the date of her death is disputed because of sensationalism and misinformation. One has to hope that Naomi Wise used the nickname Omie in her life and preferred it, because she is known through the song written about her murder to this day as Omie Wise. The facts are sparse and mostly missing from the ballads carrying her name. Omie had two children when she was killed, aged 4 and 9 years old. Her age is disputed mostly based on the speculations of those who don't want to believe or don't understand that a 10 year old girl can give birth. Lina Medina was 5 when she gave birth to a healthy, full term baby. So it's certainly possible that Ms. Wise became a mother at 10 years old. Girls give birth at these young ages almost exclusively in abusive situations, with a weighty power imbalance over the victim's head. The implications of these facts are very uncomfortable.
Down in the Willow Garden
Pretty Polly
Mary Marten is murdered by her lover and the father of her most recent child in Polstead, Suffolk, England. This crime inspired several broadsides that became folk songs under the titles Marie Marten, The Ballad of Marie Marten, and The Red Barn Murder. As well as theories of wrongful execution, adultery, infanticide, and tales of prophetic dreams. Of course some of these are more far-fetched than others. Mary Marten's murderer's body was dissected in a public dissection theatre, used in experiments involving elecrtrifying his muscles, stripped of flesh, put on public display, and mechanized to point at a collection box when visitors approached it.
Frankie Silver
Andrew Rose
Wayfaring Stranger
The United States of America Civil War may be finished, but the country's struggle with opiates is just beginning.
The day Laura Foster left the home she shared with her father on horseback, the horse came home but she never did. It's likely that she had been murdered and buried in time for the evening meal. Whose hand wielded the knife, the shovel, and the intent, however, leads you to a chart-worthy web of illicit sex, sexually transmitted infections, poverty, and post-war trauma on every front. Tom Dula was convicted and hung for Laura Foster's murder after one of his lovers led the authorities to the small grave she had been buried in. Her legs were not broken, but her knees were drawn up to her chest in a sitting position.
Mary Ellen Smith is murdered by the man who was her lover and the father of her stillborn child at a meeting he arranged to reconcile. After she refused to be banished from his life he invited her to meet him in a secluded location and held her in his arms so he could shoot her in the chest. Ms. Smith's murder inspired the songs Ellen Smith and Poor Ellen Smith, both distinct tellings of the events that share the same innaccuracies. The guilt of Ms. Smith's killer has never been in much dispute, and a witness saw him washing his hands in the very spring he had invited Mary to meet him at not long after the last sighting of her with a man that matched his description.
Wratten Family Murders
Red River Valley
Pearl Bryan was the daughter of a wealthy farming family in Greencastle, Indiana. A fashionable and friendly blonde, she was known to be a little wilder than the feminine ideal of her day. Still, she taught Sunday school and was a respected member of her community. When she discovered she was pregnant she resolved to get an illegal abortion, and enlisted the help of a man she thought she could trust to help her. He was a dental student, who may or may not have been her lover, and who may or may not have been the father of her unborn fetus. She was seen in Cincinatti with him and his roommate at a local bar, where it is believed they drugged her with cocaine. The rest of the story has been told in many ways, so it's hard to know exactly what occured. What we do know is that Pearl's body was found soon after her murder in a dormant apple orchard by a local farmhand.
The police arrested the two men after the body was identified by her expensive bespoke shoes. They were hung in short order to prevent them being lynched by local citizens. The coroner was able to find the cocaine in her blood, the developing fetus in her womb, and that she had died from blood loss when her head was cut off. Pearl's sister begged the men convicted of her murder to tell her where to find her head, but they would not tell her. To this day her head has not been found. Visitors to her grave leave coins heads side up as a small gesture hoping to give Pearl Bryan peace.
Frankie and Johnny
At a party on Christmas Eve that lasted late into the night Delia Green was shot by her boyfriend in the middle of the gathering. Her killer ran away immediately but was chased down by the host of the party who was also the owner of the possibly illicit home bar the party was held in. It was also Ms. Green's workplace, where she was employed as a scrub girl cleaning up the place. Delia was taken across the street to her home where she died from her injury the next afternoon, Christmas Day.
She was just 14 years old, and so was her murderer. In court he had the attitude that the ballads inspired by this crime capture, but they leave out all of the context. Ms. Green didn't cheat or trifle. Her killer was very clear about his motive. He didn't like how she talked back to him when he talked openly about their intimate relations to the other people at the party. Specifically, she called him a 'son of a bitch', and for that her 14 year old boyfriend shot her to death. And then people started singing Sweet Delia, Another Rounder Gone, and the one we still hear, Delia's Gone. The story has wandered a long way from the historical facts.
Nell Cropsey
The House of the Rising Sun first begins to be recorded in collections of folk songs. Song collectors think it may be older. There are few details in this song to verify, but there was absolutely a brothel in New Orleans operating under the name of The House of the Rising Sun. Historians are mostly agreed that the song was originally about a woman, but the houses of ill repute in 19th century New Orleans certainly became the ruin of many a man, woman, or child. In all the ways described or suggested by the song and more.
The tragic tale of the Young Girl Cut Down In Her Prime begins to circulate in England. Landmarks referenced in the song, such as the State Hospital, lead historians to believe that the song originates in London. It is also known by the names Bad Girl's Lament and One Morning In May.
Lula Viers
In the Pines
Little Sadie
Long Black Veil
St. James Infirmary Blues
Freeda Bolt
The Lawson Family Massacre
I Hate The Capitalist System
The night that robbed Elizabeth Short of her life and turned her into a symbol of violence and victimization: The Black Dahlia.
Plane Crash at Los Gatos Canyon
The murderer that inspired Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska is pronounced dead after being executed by electric chair in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Only the Hangman
Ohio
The David Family Suicides in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the United States of America.
Jennifer Levin is murdered in Central Park by a man she briefly dated, inspiring the song Jenny Was A Friend of Mine by the Killers.
Jeremy Wade Delle, 15 years old, shoots himself in the head in front of a class of students who knew him. Jeremy was troubled, depressed, but never violent towards others. His parents were divorcing, but they did try to get him help after a failed suicide attempt. However, the 1990's were not a good time to be seeking treatment for mental illness. For profit insurance combined with large privately owned hospital chains led to hospital stays based on insurance payouts and not the actual needs of the patients. It was common to discharge patients when the approved insurance visits ran out and pronounce the patient well enough to go home whether it was true or not.
When he returned to school it was decided that they would put Jeremy into In School Suspension (ISS) alone, all day, every day, indefinitly. The story about the song says that he was late to his class and sent for a hall pass, but that wasn't the case. Jeremy was not supposed to be in any class, so the teacher asked him for a hall pass. Jeremy's powerful 'speech' that day inspired the idea of the song, but Eddie Vedder says that the violent elements were inspired by a personal friend who threatened violence at their school.