Janie Sharp Ballet, The

DESCRIPTION: After leaving "sin's way" at 16, Janie Sharp made friends with all she met, but at 18 "by criminal beast her journey ceased." The singer theorizes about her last hours, thinking she warned the murderer, was killed, and taken to heaven
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1936 (Hudson-FolksongsOfMississippi)
KEYWORDS: homicide rape
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Hudson-FolksongsOfMississippi 68, pp. 194-195, "The Janie Sharp Ballet" (1 text)
Roud #4115
NOTES [109 words]: Hudson-FolksongsOfMississippi reports, "Some thenty-five or thirty years ago [i.e. c. 1910] a young girl named Janie Sharp was brutally murdered in the Rural Hill neighbourhood near French Camp. Her former lover, Swinton Permenter, was charged with the murder and was prosecuted on circumstantial evidence, but was not convicted."
Hudson also comments that is was "A poor composition, perhaps, at the outset," and hardly improved by some years of garbling. I'd have to agree; the result is at once poor in style, weak in detail, and monotonous in its description of Janie's hypothesized transport to heaven.
This is item dF43 in Laws's Appendix II. - RBW
File: Hud068

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