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From: Titus G <noone@nowhere.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Tom Dooley had it coming.
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2024 17:00:58 +1200
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On 25/09/24 14:19, Mike Van Pelt wrote:
> In article <vccfkf$3ki1t$1@dont-email.me>,
> Bobbie Sellers  <blissInSanFrancisco@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
>> Oh and I nearly left out Folk Music but it is full of bad
>> choices that some other possibly fictional character made. "Bow
>> down your head, Tom Duley, poor boy about to die", just off
>> top of my head.
> 
> That song always bugged me. The song seems to be asking us to
> feel sorry for Tom "Yah, I knifed the b****.  And I'd have got
> away with it, too, if it weren't for that SOB Grayson." Dooley.
> 
> Nope.  Tom Dooley is a definite "Needs Killin'" character.
> After, of course, a fair trial, guilty verdict, and a long
> trip at the end of a short rope.
> 
> (I gather the song's based on a real case, and the real Tom
> Duley may have been innocent.  The one in the song, however,
> admits and brags about his guilt.  Not too different, perhaps,
> from the Lizzie "40 whacks" Borden case; the real Elizabeth
> Borden was almost certainly innocent. And was acquitted in
> court, but not in popular song.)
> 

I thought it was shame rather than sorrow for Tom, eg Hang down your
head. (in shame.) Long before I was interested in popular music, an
older brother drenched my poor ears with the Kingston Trio.

From Song Facts. Because it is quite short I have included it all.
(https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-kingston-trio/tom-dooley)
"The first hit for the Kingston Trio, this song is about Tom Dula
(pronounced Dooley) who was a real person. He was a gifted fiddle player
and enjoyed the company of ladies. During the Civil War he served the
Confederacy as a musician and was captured near the end of the war and
held as a prisoner of war. After he was released he returned to his life
and his relationship with Ann Melton and other women including Ann's
cousin Laura Foster. On the day that he and Laura were to be married she
disappeared and was found weeks later in a shallow grave. She had been
stabbed in the heart. Tom knew that it was known he was the last known
person to see her alive so he fled the county and went to work for
Colonel James Grayson on his farm in a nearby county. Dula stayed long
enough to earn money for a pair of boots and then left for Tennessee
where the posse with assistance from Colonel Grayson found him. He was
taken back to North Carolina and was represented by ex-Governor of North
Carolina Zebulon Vance. After a much publicized trial and appeal he was
found guilty and hanged in Statesville North Carolina. The graves of
Laura and Ann are visited each year by a number of tourists. Tom's grave
is on private property and is not open to the public. The "Tom Dooley"
museum is located in Ferguson North Carolina. The reason for the murder
is not known but it appears he may have killed her because of
contracting a venereal disease from her."