Rape, revenge and horror in Gillian Welch’s “Caleb Meyer”

Rape, revenge and horror in Gillian Welch’s “Caleb Meyer”

[Click on the link to hear Gillian Welch and David Rawlings performing “Caleb Meyer,” here.  Lyrics printed at the end of this post]

Has there ever been a more bone-chilling song about a woman alone than Gillian Welch’s “Caleb Meyer”?   Much of the effect comes from the combination of Welch’s straightforward manner — refusing to be dramatic but just telling the story – with David Rawling’s relentless, merciless driving beat on the guitar.  But even for those of us who have not experienced anything like this, listening to the song is like watching a car wreck – you don’t want to see, but you can’t turn away.   

Gillian Welch sings often of the dark side of life, especially for poor folk in the Appalachian South.  Her protagonist Nellie Kane is alone, and therefore vulnerable, not by choice but by the conditions of her life.  She and her husband live in the mountains, but they don’t have a 40-acre spread with fences and security.   She doesn’t have a cell phone to dial.  Her neighbors are not vacationing yuppies but this violent drunk moonshiner. They are poor.  Life is hard in the hills, and this night it will be harder.

Nellie knows him enough to recognize his voice and to come out, however reluctantly, when he calls from outside the house.  As usual, the danger is not from strangers.  And tonight she underestimates what evil he is capable of, apparently surprised when she is attacked.  The shocking ending of the story finds Nellie in a pool of Caleb’s blood.

But here’s the key question about this song:  what is the overall point?  That is to say, what genre of story or song are we listening to?  The end of the story, where Nellie kills Caleb Meyer, might lead you to describe this as a revenge song.   But I suggest that this is dead wrong.  To describe this song as a revenge song is to completely miss the tone of the song, the direction of the story, and the character of the protagonist.  I suggest rather that this song is not about revenge at all:  this is a horror story.  

Two observations confirm this:  first notice the chorus, where Nellie tells Caleb that his ghost will “wear them rattlin’ chains,” like Marley in A Christmas Carol, bearing the burden of his sins after his death.  Only at the end of the song do we realize that Caleb is already dead as Nellie tells the story.  But notice the repeated plea:  “when I go to sleep at night, don’t you call my name!”  Nellie is haunted by Caleb Meyer, even after his death, like a recurring nightmare where he calls her out as he did that one fateful night.

The second observation is about the climactic event.  This is hardly the cavalry coming over the hill.  Nellie prays plaintively:  “My God, I am your child, send your angels down.”  What does she get as the answer to her prayer?  A broken bottle.  It’s an ironic answer to prayer:  “Is this the best you could do, Lord?  A broken bottle?”  But Nellie makes the best of what she’s got, and her “deliverance” is not a satisfying blow against evil but yet another horror, as she ends up with the carcass of this drunk fool on top of her, drenched in his blood.  No wonder Caleb Meyer haunts her dreams.

There is no payoff here, as in a revenge story where the afflicted person can finally burst out in righteous anger and enjoy the richly-deserved downfall of the evil one.  Nellie Kane survives, and makes no apology for doing so, but she gets no payoff, no satisfaction:  she gets only one horror following another and a ghost whose voice she can’t get out of her head.  The final chorus emphasizes the lack of closure by failing to resolve the chord sequence, finishing without returning to the tonic chord, which leaves the song hanging in the air, so to speak.

So if horror is the genre, what is the point?  Horror stories or movies, at their worst (think Friday the 13th), can be voyeuristic celebrations of violence, where the villain is actually the protagonist whose gorey deeds we are invited to anticipate and “enjoy.”   But at its best (think Stephen King in The Shining), horror is a way of acknowledging the darkest aspects of human life, things we deeply fear, or things we do not fear but should.  Horror forces us to look at things as they are, like it or not.  And in “Caleb Meyer,” Gillian Welch has given us a horror story that identifies steadfastly with Nellie against her attacker.  Here we are forced to acknowledge rape not as an accident, not a misunderstanding, not boys being boys, but as a life-altering horror.  There is no moralizing conclusion or political cause at the end, just the voice of Nellie Kane begging the ghost of her attacker to let her sleep at night.  If rape is horror, the conclusions draw themselves.

© Mark A. Plunkett, Fort Leonard Wood, MO  April 2012

 Revised Fort Benning (Columbus), GA February 2016

 

Caleb Meyer

Caleb Meyer, he lived alone
In them hollerin’ pines
Then he made a little whiskey for himself
Said it helped pass the time

Long one evenin’ in back of my house,
Caleb come around
And he called my name ’til I went out
with no one else around

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
but when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name

Where’s your husband, Nellie Kane
Where’s your darlin’ gone?
Did he go on down the mountain side
and leave you all alone?

Yes, my husband’s gone to Bowlin’ Green
to do some business there.
Then Caleb threw that bottle down
and grabbed me by my hair.

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
but when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name

He threw me in the needle bed,
across my dress he lay
then he pinned my hands above my head
and I commenced to pray.

I cried My God, I am your child
send your angels down
Then feelin’ with my fingertips,
the bottle neck I found

I drew that glass across his neck
as fine as any blade,
and I felt his blood pour fast and hot
’round me where I lay.

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
But when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name

Caleb Meyer, your ghost is gonna
wear them rattlin’ chains.
But when I go to sleep at night,
Don’t you call my name

© Gillian Welch