Path: ...!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Mike Van Pelt Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Tom Dooley had it coming. Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2024 02:19:31 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 26 Message-ID: References: <20240913a@crcomp.net> Injection-Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2024 04:19:32 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="6ad4994c02623980e914567900fb0505"; logging-data="3720405"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18nkNmg6WEJX02c7GMhlN8aSlL1s/yPNqA=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:lojLI/mS+/HIswajzVkq/nPNslM= Originator: mike@Mike-Laptop.localdomain (Mike-Laptop) X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010) Bytes: 2193 In article , Bobbie Sellers 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.) -- Mike Van Pelt | "I don't advise it unless you're nuts." mvp at calweb.com | -- Ray Wilkinson, after riding out Hurricane KE6BVH | Ike on Surfside Beach in Galveston