"Ode To Billie Joe" as written by and Bobbie Gentry....
It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin' cotton, and my brother was balin' hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And mama hollered out the back door, y'all, remember to wipe your feet
And then she said, I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge
Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And papa said to mama, as he passed around the blackeyed peas
Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please
There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow
And mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And brother said he recollected when he, and Tom, and Billie Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show
And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night?
I'll have another piece-a apple pie; you know, it don't seem right
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge
And now ya tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And mama said to me, child, what's happened to your appetite?
I've been cookin' all morning, and you haven't touched a single bite
That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today
Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way
He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge
And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge
A year has come and gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe
And brother married Becky Thompson; they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus going 'round; papa caught it, and he died last spring
And now mama doesn't seem to want to do much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge
I was out choppin' cotton, and my brother was balin' hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And mama hollered out the back door, y'all, remember to wipe your feet
And then she said, I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge
Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And papa said to mama, as he passed around the blackeyed peas
Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please
There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow
And mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And brother said he recollected when he, and Tom, and Billie Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show
And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night?
I'll have another piece-a apple pie; you know, it don't seem right
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge
And now ya tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And mama said to me, child, what's happened to your appetite?
I've been cookin' all morning, and you haven't touched a single bite
That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today
Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way
He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge
And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge
A year has come and gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe
And brother married Becky Thompson; they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus going 'round; papa caught it, and he died last spring
And now mama doesn't seem to want to do much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge
Lyrics submitted by fLiCkErBiTcH
"Ode to Billie Joe" as written by Bobbie Gentry
Lyrics © Spirit Music Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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the father disapproves of Billy Jo - while not iron-clad, it reveals a reason for the singer to keep the relationship quiet
the singer is visibly upset to hear the news - again, not a hard reason for abortion, but it implicates her directly in the reason
the item they throw, while possibly a token of love, probably isn't -- Brother Taylor says he saw the singer AND Billy Jo thowing something. If it was a token of love, why would Billy Jo be throwing it, too? More likely he and Billy Jo are throwing something that they SHARE. Otherwise, the phrasing would be different. Something about the singer threw something off the bridge, and Billy Jo got upset, or some other phrasing.
Lastly, the flowers. Flowers represent a lot of things, but in this context, they've got to represent life. She picks flowers - in essence, killing them - and then throws them into the river. The symbolism can't be missed. The life of the fetus, snuffed out in the same fashion, the life of Billy Jo, also ended prematurely --- and both they, and the flowers, go into the river. Notice, she drops the flowers - she doesn't throw them. If she threw them, you could maybe see that as being connected to the throwing, pushing, or killing of Billy Jo. Instead, she's simply dropping them. Adding their terminated lives to the terminated lives of Billy Jo and the baby.
In the time the song seems to be taking place, there were no Oprah’s or Dr.Phil’s. People just didn’t delve into the “meaning of life”at the table. Adults talked about adult things and kids were not to talk about adult subjects.When Bobbie Gentry was asked about the meaning of the song, she pretty much said it is what it is.(Not unlike Dylan said about HIS lyrics.In the Deep South, farm life was harsh. People were divided into useful (Brother Taylor), and useless (Billy Joe). There was no place for in between, no reason to spend a lot of time on the “useless”.
When this song first came out, there was an immediate association with Hamlet’s Ophelia with references to water and flowers. (Were people more literate in ’67?) Ophelia was driven mad with the empty love of Hamlet and the death of her father.
Ophelia’s Flower speech from Hamlet: "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts," said Ophelia to her brother Laertes. "There's fennel [empty fulfillment] for you, and columbines [foolishness]. There's rue [bitterness] for you, and here's some for me; we may call it herb of grace o' Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy. I would give you some violets [humility] , but they withered all when my father died."
To me the song is about the quiet pain in the human heart, and how little it means to those around us.
Yes. People were more literate in 1967. They actually read books not tweets and didn't have so much bombardment by video. TV was limited and You Tube did not exist. Many instructors have lamented the decay of good writing from the modern usage of text lingo.
That said, you hit close with "useful" and "useless" people. Why can't it be as simple as the girl loved Billie Joe, but her family wanted to offer her up to Brother Taylor?
The last verse seems to say if Billie Joe could have waited one year, then the girl's family would not have been such an obstacle to their desire to be together.
Better than the homopanic story, I think ;-)
I think the implied message is that the speaker of the song, the teenage girl, was in love with Billy Joe. One possible interpretation is that they were going out, and she dumped him the day before he killed himself. This would be what the preacher would have been refering to.