Kate Gladstone wrote:

There's a song on "American Folk Songs for Children, volume 1" by Mike
and Peggy Seeger, "As I Walked Out One Holiday," where the neighbor's
daughter who welcomes a boy into the house after he loses his ball.
She's only described as being dressed in fairy green. She feasts him and
gives him drink, then stabs him like a sheep. The next part of the song
is sung by the dead boy before going back to what seems to be a third
person narrator. Nobody gets punished or found out. It's kind of similar
to the typical blood libels of the middle ages, except there's no
ethnicity mentioned here.

It's a very interesting album. There's at least one drinking song in it,
too. It's nice that somebody remembers what American folklore was really
like. Somewhere recently I mentioned a show on the Nashville Network
about 15-20 years back that presented cowboy songs in an authentic way,
with "Streets of Laredo" under one of its various titles including the
request to have six pretty whore-girls carry the casket, and to include
lots of roses to cover the smell. John McEwen (sp?) was involved with that.

Kip W