Song: "Mercy Wheeler"
'Nother night, 'nother villain. This one's a vampire.
"Mercy Wheeler," words and tune by April Grant. Some of you know this one already. Please learn it and sing it wherever you wish.
Lyrics and notes from the Soundcloud post:
Now Mercy Wheeler’s in the grave; they buried her today.
And God knows what her folks will do, left up there on the hill,
Or how the girls will all get on, with Mercy and their mother gone.
The twins stayed home to tend her all the time that she was ill.
Chorus:
And she said, “Oh, I’m cold,
It’s so cold in the night.”
Head to toe, pale as bone,
Clothes and skin, ashy white.
She said, “Oh, I’m cold,
It’s so cold in the night,”
She said, “Let me get warm,
Hold me tight.”
They say she’s coming in at night to see the girls alone,
A white sheet wrapped around her, as they laid her in the clay.
The twins and little Callie said she came and tried to get in bed.
Elias and their father woke, and so she went away.
Chorus (changing "said" to "says" from this point on)
Well, all the Wheeler girls are gone--Amanda, Callie, Grace.
Elias and his dad are seeing Mercy every night.
She wants them with her in the ground, so up she comes, without a sound,
And walks home to the Wheeler place by pale and starry light.
Chorus
Elias dug her coffin up when he began to fail,
And though she had been buried through the summer and the fall,
The lid was split, and underneath, there Mercy lay with gaping teeth.
There she lay, white, fresh, and young, and not decayed at all.
Elias took a hammer and a rusty iron spike,
And when he drove it through her heart, she gave a little scream.
We burned her up. It took all day. I thought she’d never burn away.
I waited till the ashes cooled, and threw them in a stream.
[To tune of chorus]
As though she had never been touched by a flame,
She comes to my bed late at night just the same.
Chorus
Notes:
The Mercy Brown vampire incident was a real-world horror. The participants may not have used the word "vampire" but they sure had that concept: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Brown_vampire_incident
Here's Mercy's grave in a handy Atlas Obscura article: www.atlasobscura.com/places/grave-mercy-brown
"But, April, why did you change the surname from Brown to Wheeler?"
I wanted to distance it from reality a little bit, imaginary interlocutor. In case there are living relatives of Mercy Brown out there, I don't want them to be insulted by my calling their ancestor an actual vampire, when she was the victim of tuberculosis and mass hysteria.
Page image unknown origin, hopefully public domain.
"Mercy Wheeler," words and tune by April Grant. Some of you know this one already. Please learn it and sing it wherever you wish.
Lyrics and notes from the Soundcloud post:
Now Mercy Wheeler’s in the grave; they buried her today.
And God knows what her folks will do, left up there on the hill,
Or how the girls will all get on, with Mercy and their mother gone.
The twins stayed home to tend her all the time that she was ill.
Chorus:
And she said, “Oh, I’m cold,
It’s so cold in the night.”
Head to toe, pale as bone,
Clothes and skin, ashy white.
She said, “Oh, I’m cold,
It’s so cold in the night,”
She said, “Let me get warm,
Hold me tight.”
They say she’s coming in at night to see the girls alone,
A white sheet wrapped around her, as they laid her in the clay.
The twins and little Callie said she came and tried to get in bed.
Elias and their father woke, and so she went away.
Chorus (changing "said" to "says" from this point on)
Well, all the Wheeler girls are gone--Amanda, Callie, Grace.
Elias and his dad are seeing Mercy every night.
She wants them with her in the ground, so up she comes, without a sound,
And walks home to the Wheeler place by pale and starry light.
Chorus
Elias dug her coffin up when he began to fail,
And though she had been buried through the summer and the fall,
The lid was split, and underneath, there Mercy lay with gaping teeth.
There she lay, white, fresh, and young, and not decayed at all.
Elias took a hammer and a rusty iron spike,
And when he drove it through her heart, she gave a little scream.
We burned her up. It took all day. I thought she’d never burn away.
I waited till the ashes cooled, and threw them in a stream.
[To tune of chorus]
As though she had never been touched by a flame,
She comes to my bed late at night just the same.
Chorus
Notes:
The Mercy Brown vampire incident was a real-world horror. The participants may not have used the word "vampire" but they sure had that concept: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Brown_vampire_incident
Here's Mercy's grave in a handy Atlas Obscura article: www.atlasobscura.com/places/grave-mercy-brown
"But, April, why did you change the surname from Brown to Wheeler?"
I wanted to distance it from reality a little bit, imaginary interlocutor. In case there are living relatives of Mercy Brown out there, I don't want them to be insulted by my calling their ancestor an actual vampire, when she was the victim of tuberculosis and mass hysteria.
Page image unknown origin, hopefully public domain.