and from the department of non-Oxford links

[angevin2]

eMusic has an article up called The 13 Grisliest Murder Ballads of All Time.

Now, this includes both traditional songs and not (Eminem's "Stan" is on there), But seriously, any list of the grisliest murder ballads that includes legitimate folk songs but not Long Lankin or Child Owlet -- possibly the most violent of the Child canon -- is not to be

Comments

[gehayi]

If you want the world's creepiest inversion of a Murder Ballad--a song in which the protagonist is actively trying to prevent death while simultaneously and systemtically destroying someone's ability to speak, move, sense things and live--look no further than the Clockwork Quartet's "The Doctor's Wife." Fair warning: this song is High Octane Nightmare Fuel.

If we're talking grisly, I think that Tom Lehrer's "The Irish Ballad" and Weird Al Yankovic's "The Night Santa Went Crazy" have to count. Comedy songs they may be, but they're both kind of gruesome.

In the former, Sinead drowns her father in the creek, poisons her mother, sets her sister's hair on fire and dances around playing the violin as her sister burns to death, dumps her older brother in the ocean alive but weighted down with stones, and cuts up her infant brother, cuts him up in a stew and serves him to the neighbors.

As for the latter--perkiest song ever, and the victims are elves and reindeer, but...the person going postal is SANTA. Possibly the grisliest lines?

He ground up poor Rudolph
Into reindeer sausage.
He got Dancer and Prancer
With an old German Luger,
And he slashed up Dasher
Just like Freddy Krueger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTGlUMvbhSw

(Sorry. YouTube is not letting me embed.)