Frankie Silvers

That dreadful dark and dismal day
Has swept my glory all away
My sun gone down, my life is spent
An' I must leave this world at last

Jedge Daniels has my sentence passed
These prison walls I'll leave at last
Nothing to cheer my drooping head
Until I'm numbered with the dead

Oh dreadful thought for any wife
To try to take my husband's life
By weeks an' months was all my time
For me to do this awful crime

Come you young folks and on me gaze
Take warning how you spend your days
My sun gone down, my life is past
I leave this wicked world at last.

DT #776
Laws E13
From Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, vol. 2
Collected from Marie Wilbur of Pineville MO in 1934
Charles Silver was murdered in 1831 and his wife hanged two years later.
Some think this event inspired "Frankie and Johnny"
SOF
oct96