This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
I met a little girl in Knoxville
A town we all know well
And every Sunday evening
Out in her home I'd dwell
We decided to take an evening walk
About a mile from town
I picked a stick up off the ground
And I Beat That Fair Girl Down
She fell down on her bended knee for mercy she did cry
Oh willy dear, don't kill me here, I'm unprepared to die.
She never spoke another word, I only beat her more.
Until the ground around us, with all her blood did pour.
I took her by her golden curls and drug her round and round,
Throwing(ed) her into the river that flows through Knoxville town.
Go down, go down you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eye.
Go down, go down you Knoxville girl, you can never be my bride.
I headed back to Knoxville, got there about midnight.
My mother she was worried and woke up in a fright.
I told my anxious mother I was bleeding out my nose.
I called for me a candle to light myself to bed.
I called for me a handkerchief to bind my aching head
Rolled and tumbled the whole night through as troubles was for me
Like flames of hell around my bed and in my eyes could see
They carried me down to Knoxville and put me in a cell
My friends all tried to get me out but none could go my bail
I'm here to waste my life away down in this dirty old jail.
Because I murdered that Knoxville girl,
The girl I loved so
Well...
A town we all know well
And every Sunday evening
Out in her home I'd dwell
We decided to take an evening walk
About a mile from town
I picked a stick up off the ground
And I Beat That Fair Girl Down
She fell down on her bended knee for mercy she did cry
Oh willy dear, don't kill me here, I'm unprepared to die.
She never spoke another word, I only beat her more.
Until the ground around us, with all her blood did pour.
I took her by her golden curls and drug her round and round,
Throwing(ed) her into the river that flows through Knoxville town.
Go down, go down you Knoxville girl with dark and rolling eye.
Go down, go down you Knoxville girl, you can never be my bride.
I headed back to Knoxville, got there about midnight.
My mother she was worried and woke up in a fright.
I told my anxious mother I was bleeding out my nose.
I called for me a candle to light myself to bed.
I called for me a handkerchief to bind my aching head
Rolled and tumbled the whole night through as troubles was for me
Like flames of hell around my bed and in my eyes could see
They carried me down to Knoxville and put me in a cell
My friends all tried to get me out but none could go my bail
I'm here to waste my life away down in this dirty old jail.
Because I murdered that Knoxville girl,
The girl I loved so
Well...
Lyrics submitted by spliphstar
Knoxville Girl Lyrics as written by Dando
Lyrics © BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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