| Track of the Day - 4/27/2007 |
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Track of the Day - The Cruel Ship's Carpenter
Listen to The Cruel Ship's Carpenter on Rhapsody
Today's track takes us back to the United Kingdom for a folk artist that hails from Yorkshire. Mike Waterson is best known for his years with his sisters and brother-in-law in the band, The Watersons. He also found time to perform with the band Blue Murder, which is made up several famous English folk singers. However, for this track we're taking a look at some of his solo work as he tackles a well-known murder ballad.
The Cruel Ship's Carpenter is a fairly typical story as far as murder ballads go. Man meets and falls in love with woman. Man gets woman pregnant. Man takes said woman on a long walk that ends with them coming across a grave he dug the night before and... Well, needless to say, the grave is the final resting place of the woman. So all in all: a fairly typical murder ballad.
The Cruel Ship's Carpenter takes a twist though that really goes back to the roots of the genre. These days either the man gets away scot-free, he is plagued with guilt or his crime is discovered and they haul his butt away. In the early ballads though, the revenge usually came by supernatural means. These supernatural overtones have been typically discarded over the last century in favor of a more real scenario. Who knows why? Personally, I think having the rotting corpse of the deceased show up is a little bit more powerful than the narrator tossing and turning in bed. However, for this recording of The Cruel Ship's Carpenter, Waterson left the supernatural elements intact.
After covering up the grave, the man seems pretty content that he will get away with his crime. He heads off and boards his ship to bolt town. However, strange things happen and the ghost of the woman presumably makes her appearance. Fearful that his ship is doomed, the captain demands that someone confess to the crime. However, when it is the man's time to speak up, he denies the crime. At that point...
But as he was a-going and turning around,
He spied lovely Mary, she was dressed all in brown,
And she's snatched at him, and she's cut him, and she's tore him in three,
Saying, "That's for the murder of my baby and me!"
So in the end, the ghost gets her own justice. The Cruel Ship's Carpenter is very similar to another classic murder ballad named Pretty Polly. Though that ballad lacks the supernatural elements, there is an obvious connection between it and The Cruel Ship's Carpenter. We'll get to Pretty Polly soon enough though, since it is one of the more popular murder ballads out there and there are countless versions for us to look at.
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Music, Murder Ballads, Track of the Day
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April 27, 2007, 2:06 pm |
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