Little Sadie

I went out last night to take a little round,

I met little Sadie and I blowed her down,

I run right home and I went to bed

With a .44¹ smokeless under my head.

I went out last night to take a little round,

I met little Sadie and I blowed her down,

I run right home and I went to bed

With a .44 smokeless under my head.

I begun to think what a deed I'd done,

I grabbed my hat and away I'd run²,

I made a good run, but I run too slow:

They overtook me down in Jericho.

Standing on a corner a-ringing my bell,

Up stepped the sheriff from Thomasville,

He says, "Young man, is your name Brown?

Remember the night you lay––blowed³ little Sadie down?"

"Oh, yes, sir, my name is Lee,

I murdered little Sadie in first degree,

First degree and second degree –

Got any papers, will you serve 'em to me?"

Took me downtown and they dressed me in black,

They put me on a train and they brought me back,

Had no one to go my bail,

Crammed me back into the county jail.

Judge and jury took their stand,

Judge had the papers in his hand –

Forty-one days, forty-one nights,

Forty-one years to wear the ball and the stripes.

¹ Pronounced "forty-four".

² It sounds as though Dylan sings "I'd run" (perhaps under the influence of the previous line's similar ending, "...what a deed I'd done") even if it doesn't make much sense in terms of tense. I think Dylan makes a grammatical mistake here (and by "mistake" I never mean an instance of non-standard English, but rather an actual grammatical mistake, an instance where one says something that one did not intend to say) or Dylan simply says "I".

³ Dylan probably just gets tripped up here, thinking of saying "Remember the night you laid little Sadie down" or something similar.