Both versions of the song "By the Banks of the Ohio" sung by Johnny Cash and Bill Monroe, have similar layouts in the sense that certain events partake in these two versions are simliar. Both versions talk about how there is a man who is in love with a woman, and asks her to take a walk with him by the banks of the Ohio River. Then in both versions the men ask the women they are in love with to marry them, they say no, and then the men decide to kill them because of the fact that they would not agree to be their wives. The way in which the women are murdered is where the main differences in these songs come into play. In the Bill Monroe version, he simply drowns her in the river, not very symblioc in any way, he just seems to do it out of anger because she wouldn't agree to be his wife. Whereas in the version sung by Johnny Cash, the way that his true love is murdered is symbolic in the way that he plunges a knife into her breast, this could be argued that he plunged a knife into her breast because that is near the location of her heart, representing the fact that if she is not going to be married to him that he is going to take her heart from her as a symbol making the death in this version filled with more meaning than just drowning her like in the Bill Monroe version. Therefore this pain is more prominant and there is more emotion coming through the Johnny Cash version of this song with more of a punch than the Bill Monroe. This is another way these two versions are different, the fact that the death is more full of meaning in the Johnny Cash version shows that there is more passion when compared to the version by Bill Monroe.