Who was ‘Henry Lee’ from the Nick Cave and PJ Harvey song?
Sparks were clearly flying when Nick Cave and PJ Harvey recorded the video for their 1996 single ‘Henry Lee’ in matching black suits. Yet the song hardly typifies a match made in heaven. It features on an album entitled Murder Ballads, the ninth by Cave and his band, the Bad Seeds, for a reason.
‘Henry Lee’ was, in fact, the oldest and most archetypal of all the actual murder ballads Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds recorded for the album. It dates back to at least the 18th century, a period during which ballads depicting tales of grisly murder, typically of one lover by another, became a popular subgenre of the folk ballad form in Scandinavia, Scotland and parts of England.
Scotland appears to be where the song ‘Henry Lee’ originated from since its lyrics were first recorded in the anthology of Anglo-Scottish border ballads Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1812. The song could be found there under its traditional Scottish title, ‘Earl Richard’.
While there are many differences between the lyrics of ‘Earl Richard’ (also known as ‘Young Hunting’, ‘Proud Girl’ or ‘False Lady’) and ‘Henry Lee’, the story they tell is essentially the same. A man comes across a woman in the wilderness, who lures him in before slitting his throat with “a pen knife in her hand”. And then a “little bird” either “lit down” or “up bespake”, drawing attention to the crime at hand.
There are important distinctions to be made, particularly in the framing of Earl Richard as an arrogant lord of the manor who has come to take what isn’t his – the wife of the song’s narrator. This perspective is absent from ‘Henry Lee’.
So, who was the real Henry Lee?
The differing perspective of the singer and the absence of class politics at play in ‘Henry Lee’ is because it’s an American version of the ballad. Catalogued by Harvard University folk historian New England Francis James Child in the second half of the 19th century, the ballad was still recorded as ‘Young Hunting’.
But its lyrics had now morphed from a borderland revenge story of an earl getting his comeuppance for lording it over his fiefdom, to haunting wilderness tale from the American south. Cave and Harvey took inspiration for their version from the 1929 recording of the ballad as ‘Henry Lee’, by West Virginian dustbowl balladeer Dick Justice. The verses are lifted straight from Justice’s version, but the chorus with embellished lines of “La-la-la-la-lee” is their own addition and arrangement.
As for the name of the song itself, we have no historical evidence as to who, if anyone, the Henry Lee of the title specifically refers to. There were many Henry Lees in the United States during the 19th century, including four generations of Virginian soldiers, the third of whom was a general in George Washington’s army during the American War of Independence. His son, Robert E Lee, later became one of the leading Confederate generals during the American Civil War.
It’s doubtful that the song refers to any of these men since there is no historical link to be read in the lyrics. Many traditional ballads and blues songs from the southern United States bear names that can’t be traced, given that the songs were passed down through oral tradition in poor, rural areas with few written records to speak of.
More interesting than the identity of its mysterious titular character is the journey of the song itself, from borderland revenge ballad to southern American folk song to love anthem for ’90s indie rockers Cave and Harvey.
