Jeni Hankins & Billy Kemp: Listen & Lyrics
The Ballad of Sally Kincaid
For Lee Smith, our favorite Southern writer
She was born up near Grundy in a coal mining camp.
She went to church one Sunday and came home a tramp.
It was an itinerant preacher man who spoiled her, they say,
with a gun and a Bible he bought on Good Friday.
He prayed with them on Easter, but all his prayers were lies.
And he stole their small offering and Sally for his bride.
Some say she went willingly and helped him with his crimes.
Some say she had a baby that took sick and died.
But the law found that preacher man in Bristol, Tennessee —
dead in a hotel room — strangled with a sheet.
With no evidence to hold her, they had to let her go,
and all she could think of was her old mountain home.
She showed up one Sunday at the back of the church
with the stolen offering, asking for work.
But hearts were hardened and eyes like glass,
and no one would take her in on account of her past.
She’d been places and seen things that no one could trust.
She was the child of the Devil, now, wild and cursed.They called her a floozy and they called her a tramp,
but when she danced on the bar, she was like a lamp
that shone too brightly, like the queen of that town.
And with all the lust inside them, men laid their money down.
But beauty is not lasting, and flowers, sure to fade.
And the light crept slowly from Sally Kincaid.
She washed the ladies’ dresses and she used her needle, too.
She did most anything that they would have her do.
O, where has old Sally gone? O, don’t you understand?
She’s lying in this pine box with no offering in her hand.
She’s gone to her savior alone and penniless,
She’s buried up near Grundy on that mountain she loved best.
You’ll find her up near Grundy on that mountain she loved best.