The Cuckoo sings of murder

I agree with Lida that the songs assigned for this week all sounded very similar (they are indistinct, so to say) but I think the similiarity in sound is a hallmark of any song within the same genre. And that leads to the reason I chose The Cuckoo as my project - the instant I heard Jean Ritchie sing the first words "Oh, the cuckoo-" I felt something that none of the other songs were able to evoke. The Cuckoo made me feel particularly uneasy, not necessarily due to the lyrics, but in the way that it is sung so beautifully by Jean Ritchie.. she evokes a sense of despondency disguised in words of hope, intermixed with a sense of poignancy.  I'm having trouble finding the right words... maybe there aren't any. I'm posting the lyrics here because they are so starkly different than Doc Watson & Clarence Ashley's version of the song - not only because it is a woman's perspective but more so in the general meaning of the song. Jean Ritchie's cuckoo bird symbolizes femininity and empowerment (the cuckoo only "sings" during spring, a season characterized by beauty and warm weather) while Doc Watson & Clarence Ashleys' cuckoo bird only "hollers" on the 4th of July, a date which I think was only chosen because July rhymes with flies, though I may be wrong and the date may be significant in symbolizing independence or freedom.

O the cuckoo she's a pretty bird, she sings as she flies;

She brings us glad tidings and she tells us no lies.

She sucks all the pretty flowers to make her voice clear

And she never sings “cuckoo” till the spring of the year.

Come all you young women, take warning by me,

Never place your affection on the love of a man.

For the roots they will wither, the branches decay,

He'll turn his back on you and he'll walk square away.

If you do forsake me I'll not be forsworn

And they'll all be mistaken if they think that I'll mourn;

For I'll get myself up in some higher degree

And I'll walk as light by him as he can by me.

During class I had a lot of thoughts running through my head pertaining to the discussion of Banks of the Ohio - of how it's such a dark song that is sung so lightly, even playfully, and how could they sing of murder so lightheartedly?

Maybe it stems from the foundation of Appalachian music, from Appalachian life.

The Appalachias were initially settled by poorer people -

"It is generally perceived that this 'lower' class of immigrant resulted in the 'poor white trash' or 'hillbillies' of Deliverance fame, although the truth is that to survive in the Southern Mountains you needed to be resourceful, healthy, and knowledgeable." (source)

Mountain life was undoubtedly difficult, and I would imagine the Appalachian communities were largely isolated from greater American culture. After doing a lot of online research on Appalachian culture and history to try to understand the darkness of Appalachian folk songs like Banks of the Ohio and Barbara Allen, I was led to examine murder ballads, a subgenre of traditional ballads. I didn't understand why murder ballads are so prevalent other than the fact that they are narrative songs in which the narrative is particularly provocative. Then I came across this article -

"The cultural insulation of the Scots and Scots-Irish denizens of the [Appalachian] hills and hollers, often coupled with an outsize concept of personal honor, preserved an age-old reliance on violence as an acceptable means of resolving problems. Isolated by geography from the world of electricity and internal combustion engines—and often of literacy—this tradition carried well into the 20th century..."

With a quote from Lomax's Folks Songs of America:

“Willful and cold-blooded murders…came naturally to people whose ancestors were…moonshiners and feudists. The old [Scottish] Border ballad tradition, which linked love and death, fitted the code of the backwoods.”

So I guess the simple answer is that these songs are so dark is essentially because it alludes to the cultural origins of the people of Appalachia, while also being a thriller (equivalent to a tabloid story, interestingly, according to the article above). I'm looking forward to examining each narrative further...