[HN Gopher] The murder ballad was the original true crime podcast
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The murder ballad was the original true crime podcast
        
       Author : tintinnabula
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2021-02-06 01:05 UTC (21 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (daily.jstor.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (daily.jstor.org)
        
       | robotmay wrote:
       | For anyone interested in the subject, the Oxford Bodleian Library
       | has an online collection of broadside ballads, which date back
       | quite a long time in the UK: http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
       | 
       | The broadside ballad was often used for news of the times, and it
       | was common to set a new story to a tune that the general public
       | already knew. Where it gets very interesting is how multiple folk
       | songs spawn over time from one ballad or folk tale, such as
       | "Scarborough Fair" and "Acre of Land" being vastly different
       | (probable) descendants of
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elfin_Knight.
        
         | fuzzfactor wrote:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knoxville_Girl
         | 
         | It's quite grim but one reason so many nearby mountain folk
         | have always been familiar with it might be if there were so few
         | settlers in the mid 1700's that a single Englishman could have
         | made _every settler_ familiar with it as an already-old
         | recognized traditional pre-Knoxville version toward the very
         | beginning of settlement.
         | 
         | Eventually, after Knoxville arose the local Knoxville version
         | could have been coined in about 1800 when there was still such
         | a small population that it became almost universally known that
         | way since then.
         | 
         | So a true tale of a British murder in 1683 was possibly carried
         | forward since then largely by a hillbilly society not even
         | highly focused on the arts of reading & writing.
         | 
         | If not so accurately, as a cautionary tale in order to
         | accomodate the attention-getting engagement needed to preserve
         | relevance regardless that the crime really didn't happen in
         | Knoxville.
         | 
         | It's even possible that an Appalchian returning to Ireland
         | brought the ballad back there and the Irish version may not
         | have come directly from England.
        
       | Fellshard wrote:
       | Somewhat of an aside, but for an example of these, Tripod (Scott
       | Edgar, Steve Gates, Simon Hall) and Austin Wintory wrote a suite
       | of murder ballads for "Assassin's Creed: Syndicate," and they're
       | a rollicking bit of morbid fun.
       | 
       | https://austinwintory.bandcamp.com/album/assassins-creed-syn...
        
       | bloat wrote:
       | I can heartily recommend this compilation of old American songs
       | on all sorts of newsworthy topics, lots of murders, but also
       | train crashes, fires, hurricanes, and other assorted natural
       | disasters.
       | 
       | https://www.discogs.com/Various-People-Take-Warning-Murder-B...
        
       | lb1lf wrote:
       | And, of course, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds paid tribute to the
       | genre in the mid-nineties, doing a wonderful mix of classics like
       | Stagger Lee[0] and Cave's own songs.
       | 
       | [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbe5RERDh4k
       | 
       | The video above probably wins the award for most (voluntarily)
       | absurd clash between topic and appearance.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-02-06 23:02 UTC)