Hang Down Your Head

"Hang down your head, Tom Dooley

Hang down your head and cry

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley

Poor boy, you're bound to die"*

Tom Dula pronounced Dooley, was a young man who couldn't help from sleeping with two women or some say three, at the same time.  And all of them were cousins, Laura, Anne and Pauline.  Well one of them Laura, was found stabbed to death.  Most people thought it was a jealous Anne, who stabbed Laura to death.  Anne was arrested and tried but then Tom Dula either because he saw the error of his ways, or he just couldn't stand to see another of his paramours die, confessed.  Tom Dula, said it was me and Anne had nothing to do with it.  Of course Anne, was then acquitted.

Now Tom Dula may have had some bumps in the road.  He was on the losing side in the Civil War and romantically he may have loved too often and too well, if not too wisely.  But he was, in the end, an honorable man.  He faced up to his demons.  Tom Dula was hung but the story of Tom Dula lives on.  It was a ballad by Thomas Land, that was sung through the decades, till someone recorded it in 1938.  The Kingston Trio has the most famous recording.

This ballad is included in 'American Songs of the Century' and is also one of the 'Top 100 of All Time Western Songs'.  It is a haunting and sorrowful ballad, about lost lives and lost love.

All of which brings us to modern day and one Lindsay Clancy.  Lindsay strangled her three children to death, then she slit her wrists and threw herself out the window.  She didn't use as much pressure on her wrists, as she did when she strangled her children and the window she jumped out of, was on the second floor.  So it was only filicide not filicide/suicide.

Of course she was arrested and tried but then a strange thing happened, a hung jury.  The poor woman suffers from depression and hears voices.  So she and her attorneys say.  And the doctors didn't give her the right meds.  And it's also postpartum depression and that's a killer.  The jury saw her in a wheelchair.  Her husband left her and well, she's lost her kids.  11 members of the jury felt sorry for her.  Juries are often ruled by emotion, not the law, or even common sense.

They hung Tom Dolley/Dula both in the song and in real life.  Lindsay Clancy may only be sent to a mental institution and don't be surprised if sometime in the future, she gets out of that wheelchair and with the right meds, she's ready to rejoin society.

Honor is a strange thing.  Some people are born with it and some people acquire it through a test of their will.  Then there are other people, people who you would least expect to have it and yet, they acquire it.  They acquire it, through tragedy, suffering and death.  Sometimes, their own.

They'll be no haunting and sorrowful ballads for Lindsay Clancy.

Dicens simile factum est

Pro Bono Pubico

*Thomas Land