Mining a Mystery–Poor Ellen Smith, pt. 2
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| Aoife O’Donovan |
This is the second in a series of posts on “Poor Ellen Smith.” Read the first one here.
Our posts here at Murder Ballad Monday are just a few small additions to the numerous reviews, ruminations on, and histories of “Poor Ellen Smith.” In all of the sources I’ve reviewed so far, the most surprising thing I’ve found is the almost complete silence on one question: “What the heck is up with Frank Proffitt?”. It’s the one question I can’t get out of my head, and it will be the sole focus of this, our second post on “Poor Ellen Smith.”
Here’s where the question originates. As I reviewed the various versions of “Poor Ellen Smith” on Spotify and elsewhere, I got to Frank Proffitt’s version, and heard the familiar “How Firm a Foundation” (“Protection”) tune and the customary opening verse.
Matters then take a decidedly different turn.
Listen for yourself.
Where did that come from? A few songs later, I found another one with the same lyrics, but these are the only two performances I can find with these lyrics. I’ll get to the other performance in a moment.
Proffitt is perhaps best known as the musician who introduced “Tom Dooley” to the broader world. “Dooley,” like “Poor Ellen Smith” was collected from Proffitt by Frank and Anne Warner. Here are Proffitt’s lyrics to “Poor Ellen Smith,” as I’ve transcribed them from the Smithsonian Folkways liner notes:
Poor Ellen Smith, where was she found,Â
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| Frank Proffitt being recorded by Anne Warner photo by Frank Warner |
Shot through the heart, lyinâ cold on the ground.
Many hearts she has broken, many lies she has told,
It all now is ended in her bed in the snow.
Poor Ellen, poor Ellen, youâve wasted your life,
You could of made some man a very good wife.
Many friends tried to warn you, of your ending you was told,
It all is now ended in your bed in the snow.
So early this morning, poor Ellen was found,
Shot through the heart, lyinâ cold on the ground.
The men they will mourn you, the wives will be glad,
Such is the endinâ of a girl that is bad.
Perhaps youâre in heaven, God only knows,
But the Bible plainly tells us youâve gone down below.
POOR ELLEN SMITH: Â When Frank sang us this song in 1959 we had never heard it, or seen it, before. Since then we have found it in Brown III, in A.P. Hudsonâs Folksongs of Mississippi, in Davisâs Folksongs of Virginia, Henryâs Folksongs from the Southern Highlands, etc. Although he is not mentioned in Frankâs version, one Peter De Graff was convicted of the murder of Ellen Smith in the August 1893 term of Forsyth (N.C.) Superior Court, his conviction being later upheld by North Carolina Supreme Court. In most versions of the song he claims he was innocent. Frankâs version seems more concerned with reaching a verdict on the morals of the victim! Frank does not know the facts behind the song. He says, âI heard all the old folks, including my father, play it on the banjo, but I never heard the words until some boys from this country went to the coal mines of West Virginia in 19 and 23, and came back a-singing it.â
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| Frank Proffitt |
Now, we’ve seen many times how murder ballads, particularly ones based in romance gone dreadfully awry are meant to serve as warnings to young women, but this seemed to be a rare turn indeed, parting from the standard source material and spending all its energy on condemning the murder victim.
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| Crooked Still |
I could offer some wild speculation about how this version came to be. It could be, as one Mudcat commenter suggests (the exception noted above), that Proffitt just made it up. Proffitt was born in 1913, twenty years after DeGraff’s execution. He lived on the North Carolina border, a fair piece west of the Ellen Smith incident. If we’re to give any credence to his remarks in the liner notes at all, it’s likely the song that he was really familiar with from his childhood was “How Firm a Foundation”–that that is really what his father and family were playing on their instruments.
If that’s the case, then whether the song maps on to the real facts of the case is less salient than how such a “warning” song functions for singer and listener. It’s much more a work of fiction than an attempt to share the news.
If you’re aware of other sources that might give some credence to the “coal mining boys theory,” I’d be interested to hear about it in the comments. I’ve done a few searches for some distinctive lines of lyrics in this version, and haven’t been able to find them in any other folk song. My suspicion would be that if the “coal mining boys theory” is accurate, that we’d probably find other songs with similar lyrics.
Poor Ellen Smith from Crooked Still on Myspace.
This live performance captures the energy of the song–well worth watching.
I asked in the previous post whether we might find in “Poor Ellen Smith” a song that might both reinforce misogynistic themes and subvert them. Whether it does turns on a whole host of factors, but perhaps most succinctly in terms of  “who is singing what to whom and why?”. Lyrics matter. The artist matters. The audience matters. The context matters.
Proffitt’s version seems to be in the “reinforcement” camp, particularly in comparison with the standard versions. However much those may elicit sympathy from the listener for DeGraff’s fate, they all mourn Ellen’s passing. Those versions’ moral warnings take a much softer edge than Proffitt’s.
Does that change when O’Donovan sings the song with Crooked Still? Does the song in their voice come across to you as straightforward or ironic? It’s too simplistic to say that Proffitt is wholly on one side by virtue of its singer; and that Crooked Still is wholly on the other by virtue its musicians. I don’t think there’s any one neat answer, but I do think that Crooked Still’s performance, makes the artistic question asked of the listener a far livelier one. It makes all of the relevant questions about both the reality and the artistic re-presentation of the Ellen Smith story more pressing and difficult to dismiss within neat categories. Furthermore, it doesn’t do this by making the story any prettier or nicer. Rather, it accomplishes this effect by going into the most artistically “aggressive” telling of that story and not changing a single thing about it–other than developing a wicked good arrangement.
Next up
In the next post, we’ll dig in to some other arrangements of the “non-Proffitt” versions. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!