Fair Fanny Moore

The last time I saw my mother in 2004, she mentioned that her mother used to sing a song called Fair Fanny Moore.

 

My grandmother died when my mom was 9. It's a long, complicated story, but basically she died because my son-of-a-bitch grandfather refused to pay for a doctor to attend to her after the birth of her 10th child. My grandmother was deathly ill during the last weeks of her pregnancy and immediately post-natal. My mom said she was extremely jaundiced and horribly sick. Perhaps it was pre-eclampsia, but who knows? She died within days of the birth because my grandfather didn't want to pay for a doctor.

 

My grandfather was a major asshole, although no-one in the family talks about that now. It's a forbidden topic.  

 

Fair Fanny Moore is a murder ballad, of course; actually a rape and murder ballad. I guess that kind of material is in my blood. After mom died in 2005, I sought out information about the song, but didn't find much.  I asked my aunt if she remembered her mother singing this song, but she said no.  Of course, she's pretty guarded about their fairly horrific childhood of deep, rural poverty, but why would she hide something like that? I tend to believe her. 

 

There's another uncle whose brain I must pick someday.  He may be willing to draw back the curtain on the family secrets, although I doubt it. I missed my chance with my great Uncle Henry, the last of the Seays. He was the musicologist in the family, always insisting on a family sing along at every gathering.  I didn't see these people for more than 30 years and missed alot. 

 

I was wandering around YouTube today, killing time before a meeting, and stumbled on an old recording of the song.

 

I want to do something with the song, it calls to me.  Re-write it, re-imagine it, find my own way in. It was a final gift of my mother, a gift from her mother whom I never met.  It's like a message from beyond the grave.  I need to find a way to bring it into my present.