The Legend of Tom Dooley

Tom Dula was hanged 140 years ago. His guilt may be a matter of debate, but his legend -- and the song that cemented it -- are indisputable.
Thursday May 1 is the 140th anniversary of his hanging
In June 1865 a Confederate soldier just shy of his 21st birthday was released from a Union prison camp and began traveling back home to Reedy Branch, in mountainous Wilkes County, North Carolina. He probably thought himself mighty lucky to have survived since his only two brothers lost their lives to the war. Had he known what would transpire in three short years after he arrived back in the mountains, he would likely have chosen his brothers’ fate. It would have spared his neighbors a tragedy and been a nobler death for him.
May 1st marks the 140th anniversary of the hanging of Tom Dula for the murder of Laura Foster. Because of a ballad about this young man’s death, a song kept alive in the North Carolina mountains, the nation carries the event in its collective memory almost a century and a half later. That song, as recorded 90 years after the hanging by a little known folk group named the Kingston Trio, had an impact on American popular culture far beyond what the story alone -- or most any other story -- could have produced.
You will notice that Tom Dula’s name becomes “Dooley” in the song. It’s common in the southern mountains to shift a final unstressed “uh” sound to “ee,” so Dula was -- and is -- frequently pronounced as “Dooley.” (The song is published as "Tom Dooley," so I use that spelling for the song.) The same practice gave us the Grand Old Opry (for opera), and if you watch The Andy Griffith Show reruns (and why wouldn’t you?) you’ve heard Andy say about Aunt Bea’s cooking, “That was extry good.” Although I’ve heard this manner of speech all my life, I’ve never found an explanation for the derivation.

Irish American Vernacular English
Explains the derivation.

Dictionary
dul, dula
    a noose, loop, Irish dul, dol, snare, loop, Welsh dôl, noose, loop, doli, form a ring or loop; Greek @Gdólos, snare; Latin dolus, etc.
dula
    a pin, peg, Irish dula; cf. Latin dolo, a pike, Middle High German zol, a log.

Recorded in 1958, the Kingston Trio’s version of "Tom Dooley" is attributed to the late Frank Proffitt, a North Carolina farmer and musician (Proffitt also knew, and later recorded, a longer version, too). His version of the song became accessible beyond the local mountain communities when song collectors Frank and Anne Warner visited the North Carolina mountains in 1938 and Proffitt played the balled for them. Alan Lomax published that version, omitting one verse, in a 1947 collection entitled Folk Song U.S.A.

Hear SongLISTEN!
to the Carolina Chocolate Drops' rendition of "Tom Dooley"

--
I saw that film when I was 8 years old (1959) at a very grand theatre called
the RKO Palace in Columbus, Ohio...the film had nothing to do with the Tom
Dula of real life, but was a Hollywood contrived story about a confederate
soldier. The film did not go into the love triangle between Dula and his
three female companions

poster from the film called the "Legend of Tom Dooley"


As a North Carolina resident, this legend and
related songs can be heard regularly---the song as it is performed here in
the mountains of North Carolina is not at all like the version done by the
Kingston Trio, as one might well expect---if you can ever get hold of a
copy, Frank Proffitt was the source for that ballad. It was collected from
Frank Proffitt by Frank and Anne Warner. Proffitt was living near Reese,
North Carolina at the time (Actually, he lived at Pick Britches Valley).
Alan Lomax placed the Frank Proffitt version into his compilation "THE
FOLKSONGS OF NORTH AMERICA," Doubleday and Company, Garden City, New York,
1960. The Kingston Trio had their "hit" ca. 1958. You can hear Frank
Proffitt sing "Tom Dula" on Folk Legacy Records, FSA-1.

As a North Carolina resident I may be biased toward this song, but I find
the fact that the ballad(s) and the legends surrounding the man continue to
circulate in oral tradition some 140 years after his death to be
fascinating.

By the by, the volume of the Frank C. Brown Collection of north Carolina
Folklore that is dedicated to folk ballads contains five versions of that
ballad, one written from the perspective of Laura Foster whom Dula murdered.

(If you’d like to learn more about the legend of Tom Dula, North Carolina musician David Holt hosted an hour-long program on the subject including interviews with Frank Proffitt, Jr. and Doc Watson. Click on the UNC-TV link and look below Dula's tombstone for instructions on watching the show.)