Down in a Willow Garden
Laws #F6
Other titles or closely related songs: Rose Connelly; The Dreadful Fate of Rose Connelly; (melody is a variant of the the tune "Rosin the Bow")
Down in a willow garden
Where me and my love did meet,
'Twas there we sat a courting
My love dropped off to sleep.
I had a bottle of the burglar's wine
Which my true love did not know,
And there I poisoned my dear sweetheart
Down under the banks below.
I drew my saber through her,
Which was a bloody knife,
I threw her into the river,
Which was a dreadful sight.
My father often told me
That money would set me free,
If I would murder that dear little girl
Whose name was Rose Connelly.
And now he sits by his own cottage door,A-wiping his tear-dimmed eyes,
Staring at his own dear son,
Upon the scaffold high.
My race is run beneath the sun,
Lo, the devil’s now waiting for me,
For I have murdered that dear little girl
Whose name was Rose Connelly.
So why, exactly did her kill her? It is hard to say because too many verses have dropped on the journey from Ireland across the Atlantic. The default reason in a ballad involving the murder of a lover is that she was pregnant and the roving-rake-of-a-guy didn't want to marry her. But that reason does not seem to fir with the second half of verse two. Perhaps some kind of feud between two families was the background. Or something else . . .
Once at a music festival a woman complained that she thought poisoning, stabbing, and immersion in water was excessive and amounted to gratuitous violence. I suggested that perhaps the murderer was trying to be thorough.
This song is well-liked in bluegrass circles because it is violent and short, thus allowing for much instrumental soloing.