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You tender friends I pray draw near,
And listen whilst I rhyme,
Of a dreadful murder you soon shall hear,
A base and terrible crime.
A charming girl, her age sixteen,
Well-formed, in beauty groomed,
Who suffered death, a cruel death,
In Harbour Grace entombed.
She had not walked past one half-mile
Before she was overtaken
By a monster, one of Satan's friends,
But still in human shape.
He asked of her one awful thing,
The reason that I don't know why,
To satisfy that awful wish,
Poor girl, she had to die.
He took her by the curly locks,
He threw her to the ground,
He cut her throat from ear to ear,
And laid her body down.
Oh, then he stayed and waited around
Till all her blood had flown,
And carelessly he threw aside
Her once sweet, lovely form.
But if that murderer is found
No judge or jury need,
He'll be hung up to that cruel spot
Where he done that cruel deed.
Collected in 1959 from George Decker of Rocky Harbour, NL, by Kenneth Peacock and published in Songs Of The Newfoundland Outports, Volume 3, pp.821-822, by the National Museum of Canada (1965) Crown Copyrights Reserved.
Kenneth Peacock noted that although imported murder ballads are popular in Newfoundland, it is very unusual to find a native ballad composed about a local murder. He was pondering on this seeming contradiction when someone informed him that murder is a very rare crime in Newfoundland.
Alfreda Pike was murdered in 1870, and evidence of a confession over fifty years later by one of the murder investigators, Constable Furey, was lost until author Jack Fitzgerald revealed it in his 1997 book The Hangman Is Never Late (Creative Book Publishing, St. John's, NL).
