Once there was a little tailor boy   About sixteen years of age;   My father hired me to a miller   That I might learn the trade.         I fell in love with a Knoxville girl,   Her name was Flora Dean.   Her rosy cheeks, her curly hair,   I really did admire.         Her father he persuaded me   To take Flora for a wife;   The devil he persuaded me   To take Flora's life.         Up stepped her mother so bold and gay,   So boldly she did stand;   Johnny dear, go marry her   And take her off my hands.         I went unto her father's house   About nine o'clock at night,   A-asking her to take a walk   To do some prively talk.         We had not got so very far   Till looking around and around,   He stooping down picked up a stick   And knocks little Flora down.         She fell upon her bended knees,   For mercy she did cry:   O Johnny dear, don't murder me,   For I'm not fit to die.         I took her by her lily-white hands   A-slung her around and around;   I drug her off to the river-side,   And plunged her in to drown.         I returned back to my miller's house   About nine o'clock at night,   But little did my miller know   What I had been about.         The miller turned around and about,   Said:" Johnny, what blooded your clothes?"   Me being so apt to take a hint:   By bleeding at the nose.         About nine or ten days after that,   Little Flora she was found   A-floating down by her father's house   Who lived in Knoxville town.