Een vroeg nummer, moordballade zou men het kunnen noemen, eerder door anderen opgenomen voordat het in de versie van Dylan zelf werd uitgebracht.
Old Reilly stole a stallion
But they caught him and they brought him back
And they laid him down on the Jailhouse ground
With an iron chain around his neck
Old Reilly’s daughter got a message
That her father was going to hang
She rode by night and came by morning
With gold and silver in her hand
When the judge he saw Reilly’s daughter
His old eyes deepened in his head
He said, “Gold will never free your father
The price, my dear, is you instead”
“Oh I’m as good as dead,” cried Reilly
“It’s only you that he does crave
And my skin will surely crawl if he touches you at all
Get on your horse and ride away”
“Oh father you will surely die
If I don’t take the chance to try
And pay the price and not take your advice
For that reason I will have to stay”
The gallows shadows shook the evening
In the night a hound dog bayed
In the night the grounds were groaning
In the night the price was paid
The next morning she had awoken
To know that the judge had never spoken
She saw that hanging branch a-bendin’
She saw her father’s body broken
These be seven curses on a judge so cruel:
That one doctor will not save him
That two healers will not heal him
That three eyes will not see him
That four ears will not hear him
That five walls will not hide him
That six diggers will not bury him
And that seven deaths shall never kill him
June Tabor & the Oyster Band
Joan Baez, met de wonderlijke regel “six beggars can not buy him” als zesde vervloeking.
