“Omie Wise” — also “Naomi Wise” or “Little Omie Wise” — is one of the oldest murder ballads of American origin. It is based on a real crime: the killing of Naomi Wise, a young woman of Randolph County, North Carolina, in 1808.
By the story the song tells, Naomi, an orphan, was courted by a man named John Lewis; when she became pregnant, he lured her away on the promise of marriage and drowned her in a river. Verses about the murder were circulating within a few years of it, in the broadside-ballad tradition, and the song has been carried in oral tradition ever since.
“Omie Wise” reached records in the 1920s, in versions by Vernon Dalhart and the old-time duo of Grayson and Whitter, and it became a fixture of the old-time and folk-revival repertoires.
