“This is traditional song; we can’t let you stay happy long”¹

by Nat Ivy, Master’s Student, Folklore and Public Culture Program

“Oh, listen to my story,
I’ll tell you no lies
How John Lewis did murder
Poor little Omie Wise.²

Murder ballads have been around for centuries. A murder ballad is a narrative song that tells the story of murder. However, as with any vernacular tradition, there’s a lot more to them than that. American murder ballads are most associated with Appalachian folk music, emerging in the early 19th century as Scottish and Irish immigrants made new homes in North America. As the century progressed, these Appalachian songs blended with African musical traditions, producing blues ballads. 

Songs about murder have probably been sung for as long as there have been people to sing them. Some of them are even about real people. In investigating historical murder ballads, we can learn a lot about the gendered social expectations and realities of the communities that produced them.

My work examines three “true crime” murder ballads within their historical contexts in order to draw out the social messaging and norms they uphold. Spanning the entirety of the 19th century, my research investigates Omie Wise (1807), Tom Dooley (1866), and Frankie and Johnny (1899) as well as the community and media responses to the crimes. I argue that we can observe changes in acceptable social behaviors and the perceived value of a woman’s life through “true crime” murder ballads. Further, through the case of Frankie and Johnny, we can examine the impact of what “becoming” a living folkloric figure does to someone with less social power, unlike other “folk heroes” who lived during their own canonization, who were all white men.

Let me take you back in time. Randolph County, North Carolina. In early April, 1807, Naomi Wise was found dead, her body buoyed in Deep River just miles from her home. Within hours her lover, Jonathan Lewis, would be arrested. However, he never stood trial for her murder, escaping from prison and fleeing to Kentucky. Soon, the tragic events were strung into a song. The ballad of Omie Wise quickly spread. In fact, her murder is considered the basis for the first-ever fully American murder ballad.

However, murder ballads expose a lot more than just the sordid details of a death. Omie Wise is a story that has become a traditional standard, so common that it has even been given a genre classification, the “murdered sweetheart ballad.”³ In these songs, women are murdered by their partners, usually because they have become pregnant out of wedlock. Usually, these sweethearts are lured into a secluded place upon the promise of marriage, where they are brutally killed and callously disposed of. This is exactly what happened to Naomi Wise, who was strangled and drowned by Jonathan Lewis.

Her murder was not only memorialized in song, but it was spread as a way to keep other young women in line. Murder ballads, particularly ones based on the lives and deaths of real people, are used to convey social messages and cultural expectations. In the case of poor little Omie Wise: Don’t be generous with your trust. Don’t have premarital sex. Don’t go into the woods with a man, even if you believe he loves you. What it meant to be a “good” or a “bad” woman is inscribed among the song lyrics. The value of a woman’s life and her communal role are laid between the bars. Further, by exploring ballad variants, we can follow how these norms and expectations change as they evolve through time and place.

For Omie Wise, this came in her characterization within the ballad. Extant historical evidence shows that Jonathan Lewis was not the first man Naomi had slept with.⁴ In fact, she had two previous children at the time of her murder. She was imperfect and “impure.” However, the ballads about her cast her in the role of the ideal, naive maiden. She becomes the perfect victim and the perfect stock character to project social ideals onto. Further, the ballad version of Jonathan Lewis doesn’t escape his fate. He’s haunted by the guilt and the ghost of Omie until the day he dies.⁵ When justice wasn’t dealt in court, it was restored in the ballad. To young men, this warned: Actions have consequences. Escaping the laws of man is not the same as being free. 

Listen between the lines. These ballads may not be the full truth, but they can tell us so much more. They tell us no lies.  

—Nat Ivy received a 2024 CSWS Graduate Student Research Grant for this project.

NOTES

1 Bob Waltz, “Remembering the Old Songs: Omie Wise.” Inside Bluegrass, Aug. 2000, www.lizlyle.lofgrens.org.

2 Doc Watson, Omie Wise, CD, Doc Watson (New York, NY: Vanguard Records, 1964).

3 Delia Dattilo, “Some Patterns of the ‘Murdered Sweetheart Ballads’ in Oral Tradition, Early Recordings, and Popular Culture.” Studia Ethnologica Pragensia, no. 1 (2023): 24–40.

4 Mary Woody, ms, A True Account of Nayomy Wise (c. 1813).

5 Doug Wallin, Omie Wise, CD, Classic Mountain Songs from Smithsonian Folkways (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2002), folkways.si.edu.