Rauno Räsänen: PÄREITÄ: The Actual Story of Tom Dooley performed by Doc Watson

RALPH RINZLER: The murder of Laura Foster (January 1866) was committed a few miles from Doc's home. More than sixty years later, Doc, as a young boy, sat by the fireside at home and listened to heated discussions about the case.

Tom Dula was described to Doc as having been a handsome young man in his early twenties at the time of the murder. Local legend tells that both Laura Foster and Annie Melton were in love with Tom, and further that Sheriff Grayson, the man who took him in custody and also drove the horses from beneath him when he was hanged, was jealous of Tom. Some believe that he either committed the murder or helped Ann Melton who is reputed to have murdered Laura Foster out of jealousy.

Around Doc's home, there was great sympathy for Tom. Local people who remembered the principals in that case described Laura Foster as "very beautiful... with chestnut curls and merry blue eyes... wild as a buck." (Brown, "North Carolina Folklore" Vol II). An old man from Wilkes County, N. C. said: "Ann Melton was the purtiest woman I ever looked in the face of. She'd a-been hung too, but her neck was jist too purty to stretch hemp. She was guilty, I knowed hit... 'Ef they'd a-been ary womern on the jury, she'd a-got first degree. Men couldn't look at the womern and keep their heads." (Brown ibid.).
Two years after the murder, Ann was tried and acquitted. Tom had been hanged refusing to implicate her in any way.

Doc's great-grandmother, Betsy Triplett Watson, was called to Annie Melton's death bed and said she was told: "If I knew I would never get well again, there is something I would tell you about Tom's hanging." Doc's cousin, Ora Watson, and Rosa Lee both tell that great-granny Betsy (she is also Rosa Lee's great-grandmother) heard sounds around Annie's bed when she was dying: sounds like those of red hot rocks being dropped in a bucket of cold water.
Ann Melton was said to have told Betsy Watson that she could see the flames of Hell at the foot of her bed.
Grannie Lottie Watson (married to Betsy's son, Smith Watson) used to sing the ballad in much the same version that Doc sings here. The version popularized by The Kingston Trio was based on the singing of Frank Proffitt who lives a few minutes ride down the road from Doc.
Liner notes for "DOC WATSON," Deep Gap, NC, 1964.

DOC WATSON: In the 1860s, when this story takes place, my great-grandparents were neighbor's of Tom Dooley's family, and my grandparents, when they were just children, knew Tom's parents. As the story goes, Tom Dooley was not guilty of the murder of Laura Foster, although he was an accomplice in covering up the crime. Instead of the "eternal triangle" mentioned in the Kingston Trio's version, it was a quadrangle sort of thing.
There were two men and two women involved in the whole affair. Mr. Grayson, the sheriff, had courted both Miss Laura Foster and Miss Annie Melton, as had Tom Dooley.

Almost everyone around affirmed that Annie Melton had stuck the knife in Miss Laura's ribs and then hit her over the head. Tom Dooley, however, actually buried the girl, making himself an accomplice. Annie Melton was with Tom at Laura's burial, so she, too, was strongly suspected and was jailed. While in jail she bragged and told everyone that her neck was too pretty to put a rope around and that they'd never hang her. Of course, they never did.

Sheriff Grayson had quite a crush on Annie Melton, and he later married her. Near the end of her life Annie became very ill, and on her deathbed she called her husband in and told him something that seemed to really crush his spirit and reason for living. What Miss Annie told her husband was what she had told the neighborhood women -- that she had actually murdered Laura Foster and had let Tom Dooley go to the gallows without saying one word on his behalf. Grayson was so upset that he took his remaining family and moved completely out of this part of North Carolina and went over the edge of Tennessee, which was just being settled.

The murder of Laura Foster happened just at the end of the Civil War, and Tom Dooley, I believe, had been a hero during the war. Dooley was the kind of guy who grows up very quickly; at the age of fourteen, he was the size of a grown man. He went into the Civil War lying about his age and came back a hero. He was an unthinkably good old-time fiddler, and many people think that the original version, which I learned from my grandmother, has such a lilting, happy-sounding tune because the composer had tried his or her best to get into the song a little of Tom Dooley's personality as a fiddler.

***
Hang your head, Tom Dooley,
Hang your head and cry;
You killed poor Laurie Foster,
And you know you're bound to die.

You left her by the roadside
Where you begged to be excused;
You left her by the roadside,
Then you hid her clothes and shoes.

Hang your head, Tom Dooley,
Hang your head and cry;
You killed poor Laurie Foster,
And you know you're bound to die.

You took her on the hillside
For to make her your wife;
You took her on the hillside,
And ther you took her life.

You dug the grave four feet long
And you dug it three feet deep;
You rolled the cold clay over her
And tromped it with your feet.

Hang your head, Tom Dooley,
Hang your head and cry;
You killed poor Laurie Foster,
And you know you're bound to die.

"Trouble, oh it's trouble
A-rollin' through my breast;
As long as I'm a-livin', boys,
They ain't a-gonna let me rest.

I know they're gonna hang me,
Tomorrow I'll be dead,
Though I never even harmed a hair
On poor little Laurie's head."

Hang your head, Tom Dooley,
Hang your head and cry;
You killed poor Laurie Foster,
And you know you're bound to die.

"In this world and one more
Then reckon where I'll be;
If is wasn't for Sheriff Grayson,
I'd be in Tennesee.

You can take down my old violin
And play it all you please.
For at this time tomorrow, boys,
Iit'll be of no use to me."

Hang your head, Tom Dooley,
Hang your head and cry;
You killed poor Laurie Foster,
And you know you're bound to die.

"At this time tomorrow
Where do you reckon I'll be?
Away down yonder in the holler
Hangin' on a white oak tree."

Hang your head, Tom Dooley,
Hang your head and cry;
You killed poor Laurie Foster,
And you know you're bound to die.