Leslie Ann Levine

Here’s how “We Both Go Down Together” and “Leslie Anne Levine” are connected… It actually makes sense, but you can’t put WBGDT right before LAL, but rather interject them together at parts….

WBDGT is slightly out of order in terms of chronological order… The songs starts at the cliffs, but the story starts at the labor camp… A young girl in the labor camp catches the eye of a rich young man. The man probably fins her to be incredibly beautiful and falls in love with her. The young girl probably does not feel the same for the man, but knows his money can save her and possibly her family from a life of poverty. So she then falls in “love” with him and willing consents to a relationship and sex, hence her weeping during the love making on the grass of the clearing.

Up to this point the man could easily leave the young girl to avoid punishment from his parents, and thus does not need to go to the extreme of suicide… HOWEVER, the girl becomes pregnant, as having unprotected sex usually results in. Now the man is trapped, for he seems to honestly love the girl and their unborn baby. NOW he has to resort to suicide, knowing his “parents will never consent to this love”. He asks the girl to meet him on his extravagant porch (the vast veranda), then they travel to the cliffs of Dover.

By the time the would have known she was pregnant , (because this is in the 19th century, no “First Response”, lol) she probably would have been far along enough to be showing, maybe six months or so… On the cliffs, she could have become overly excited or dizzy (thus, “Your head is spinning”) from the anxiety or nervousness of going through with impending doom of her and her child’s life. (Remember, she didn’t really love the man and would not have the same feelings of being trapped and suicide being the only way out). This could result in her going into labor… (“hold tight it’s just beginning”)

The girl would not have been able to just jump off the cliffs if she was indeed going into labor… not only because labor pains often incapacitate the mother, but also because she’s not in love and does not want to end her and her child’s life. So the man delivers the baby playing the part of the “Wastrel Me sallied ” who brought the fate on LAL (a wastrel me sallied can be defined as a wasteful person, as in a rich person spending lavishly on unnecessary things, who’s in an unbecoming relationship with someone of lower class.)

This explains being “birthed too soon” and why Leslie Anne would have died “by noon” being premature and being born atop a cliff. Since Leslie Anne does die, the parents would have laid her somewhere, like a dry ravine/ditch… NOT thrown her over the cliff… she loved her baby as the father probably did too, they would have laid her down somewhere and possibly bury her in a ditch, making her body “in it’s grave, in a ditch not far away”. If she died as a result of the impact of the fall, she would not have been “birthed” in a “dry Ravine,” but rather would have been killed inside the womb in a watery grave.

Now that the only ting keeping the girl from jumping with the man is gone, she also feels intense anguish and takes the man’s hand then jump off the cliffs of Dover as seagulls cry out, and hence the line “We fall but our souls are flying,” (as in their souls leaving their falling bodies.) Both the man and the girl “go down Together” and there’s also “No one left to mourn” for Leslie Anne Levine.

As for Leslie Anne Levine, she haunts the area near the vicinity of her death along with another spirit. The spirit is that of a young chimney sweep, (who were often young orphaned boys) who died while being “lost and logged inside a flue” (a flue is the pipe used to vent the exhaust from a fire). As for the line “clinging to the petticoats of the girl that died” with her, I don’t believe this needs to be taken literally but helps explain why she still haunts the area fifteen years later. She rightfully blames her parents, esp. her mother for her death, and thus is clinging to her.