Oh Trankie and johnny were lovers
Oh Lordy how Ihey did love.1
OLD BALLAD
Frankie was a halfwit, johnny was a nigger,
Frankie liked to pain poor creatures
as a little 'un,
Kept a crazy love of torment when she got bigger,
Johnny had to slave it and never had
much fun.
Frankie liked to pull wings off of living butterflies,
Frankie liked to cut long angleworms
in half,
Frankie liked to whip curs and listen to their drawn
out cries,
Frankie liked to shy stones at the
brindle calf.
Frankie took her pappy's lunch week-days to the sawmill,
Her pappy, red-faced cracker, with
a cracker's thirst,
Beat her skinny body and reviled the hateful imbecile,
She screamed at every blow he struck,
but tittered when he curst.
Frankie had to cut through Johnny's field of sugar corn
Used to wave at Johnny, who didn't
pay no min
Had had to work like flity from the day that he was born,
And wan't no cracker hussy gonna put
his work behInd-.
But everyday Frankie swung along the cornfield lane,
And one day johnny helped her partly
through the wood,
Once he had dropped his plow lines, he dropped thern
many times again
Though his mother didn't know it,
else she'd have whipped him good.
Frankie and Johnny were lovers; oh Lordy how they did
love!
But one day Frankie's pappy by a big
log laid him low,
To find out what his crazy Frankie had been speaking
of;
He found that what his gal had muttered
was exactly so.
Frankie, she was spindly limbed with corn silk on her
crazy head,
Johnny was a nigger, who never had
much fun
They swung up Johnny on a tree, and filled his swinging
hide with lead,
And Frankie yowled hilariously when
the thing was done.