Ballad of the Butcher Boy in the Rampano Mountains by Anne Lutz, NYFS, New York Folklore Quarterly - Volume 3, 1947.
THE BALLAD OF THE BUTCHER BOY IN THE RAMAPO MOUNTAINS
Anne Lutz
ONCE THERE was in London a butcher boy who made love to a girl and left her, and she hanged herself. At least there is an English version of “The Butcher Boy” that begins:
In London town where I did dwell,
A butcher boy whom I knew well
He courted all my life away,
And now with me he will not stay.
That was sung for me by an old lady, now over ninety, who learned it as a child in Birmingham, England.
In Rockland County, New York, and in the adjacent part of New Jersey, most people claim that the faithless butcher boy lived in Jersey City[1].
The first person to sing part of this ballad for me was old Maggie Gannon, housekeeper for Gill Pitt, on the mountain paralleling the Haverstraw Road near Ladentown, New York. [For further account of Maggie Gannon and Gill Pitt, see A. T. Shorey's article, "Ma and Pa Pitt," which follows this one.-EDITOR] Her enunciation is poor, but her vigor and enthusiasm are amazing. This is what I got:
A butcher boy in Jersey City
And now with me he won’t not stay.
He silver will melt, he gold will fly;
You’ll be poor as I.
Go dig my grave both wide and deep,
Marble stones to my head and feet,
To show this world I died for love.[2]
With this for a beginning, I started to hunt for people who know folksongs in the area that may be roughly defined as the Ramapo Mountains and adjacent regions. Very soon I found that in this section "The Butcher Boy" was the best song to use for a feeler, whenever I began asking someone about old songs. More than twenty people have given me their versions, or at least fragments. People who do not know any other old folksongs remember this one.
Most people seem to know the story as Maggie Gannon does; the butcher boy left the girl for another who has more money,
Cal Conklin, itinerant handyman of the Tallman-Monsey-Laden- town section of Rockland County, wrote out the words of the song for me The following is his version, with his own spelling and punctuation[corrected]:
In London City where I did dwell
A butcher boy I loved so well
He courted me my Life away,
And with me then he would not stay.
There is a strange house in this town[3]
Where he goes up and sits right down
He takes another girl on his knee
And tell her thing he wouldn't tell me.
I have to grieve I tell you why
She has more gold and silver than I
Her gold will melt and silver fly
In time of need she'll be as poor as I.
I went up stairs to go to bed
And nothing to my mother said
But Mother said your acting queer
What is the trouble my daughter dear?
Oh Mother dear you need not know
The pain and sorrow grief and woe
Give me a chair and sit me down
With pen and ink to write words down.
0 dig my grave both wide & deep
Place a marble stone at my head and feet
Place upon my breast a snow white dove
To show to the world that I died for love.
When her father first came home
Where is my daughter where has she gone
He went up stairs and the door he broke
And found her hanging into a rope.
He took his knife and cut her down
And in her bosom these word he found
A silly girl am I you know
To hang my self for a butcher boy.
Must I be bound while he goes free
Must I love a boy that don't love me.
At last at last will never be
Till oranges grow on apple tree's.
You will notice that Cal said London City. About eight of every ten people who have given me parts of this ballad begin it
as follows:
In Jersey City where I did dwell,
A butcher boy I loved so well;
He courted me my heart away,
And now with me he will not stay.
Another reason for the lover's desertion may possibly be known to more people than have sung it for me. I heard it from a lady in Hillburn, New York, who first sent her small granddaughter to the kitchen to put the tea kettle on the stove, then sang in a low voice:
He courted me through rain and snow,
'Twas when my apron string hung low;
But now my apron's to my chin,
He passes by, but he never looks in.[4]
This lady's name I have promised not to mention, because her family and friends think that the old songs are bad; but in considering the history of these songs, it is interesting to know something of her background. Her family was part of that much misunderstood group of mixed Negro, Indian, and white ancestry west of the Houvenkopf, the mountain that is the western side of the pass through which the Ramapo River flows near Suffern. In the towns of this region, it is the custom to call all of those people Jackson-Whites. This lady firmly insists that her people were Negro and Indian; she uses the term Jackson-Whites for the white people along the mountains east of Suffern.
However that may be, I wonder about the person who brought the apron string stanza to that part of the mountains. Might it have been one of those unfortunate Englishwomen who were brought to America by Jackson at the time of the Revolution? A similar stanza I got from the English lady from Birmingham, who says that she learned the song from one of the "not nice" children that she wasn't supposed to be playing with. The Hillburn lady is the only person born hereabouts who has sung that stanza for me.
There is something, however, that makes me wonder whether some who sing only the gold and silver stanza may know the other one too. A couple of years after my friend from Hillburn first sang for me, she recalled some more about the butcher boy:
He has another; you know why
Because she has more gold than I;
Her gold will melt and her silver will fly;
And then she'll be as poor as I. [5]
Since she knows both reasons for the fellow's treachery, perhaps others do too, but are self-conscious about singing the "not nice" version. None of my friends except the English lady have given me any definite idea of the age of the song.[6] Even more interesting to me than its age, however, is the fact that it is certainly a live folksong today in this region so near New York City. I have heard it from a youngster of only thirteen or fourteen whose mother learned it, not from old-timers, but from other children playing on the streets of Jersey City itself, probably only about thirty years ago.
[Music insert]
A. Transcribed by Doris Parvin from the singing of Mrs. G-- of Hillburn, N. Y.
In Jersey City where I did dwell
A butcher boy I loved so well,
He courted me my life at way,
And now with me he will not stay.
[additional stanzas]
He courted me through rain and snow,
'Twas when my apron string hung low;
But now my apron's to my chin,
He passes by, but he never looks in.
He has another; you know why
Because she has more gold than I;
Her gold will melt and her silver will fly;
And then she'll be as poor as I.
B. Transcribed by Aletta Hopper from the singing of Mrs. J. Bulson, Stony Pt., N. Y.
In Jersey City where I did dwell,
A butcher boy I loved so well,
He courted me my life away,
And now with me he will not stay.]
The people who know such old songs as this are not all back in the hills. In fact, the people who have stayed back in the hills, in this section of the New York--New Jersey border country, seem for the most part to have memories in proportion to their ambition- not very great. Gill Pitt, for example, can recall only a line or two here and there when prompted; his younger half-brother, Everett, who has moved from the hills to a small farm in the Saddle River valley down in Jersey, has sung more than fifty songs for me, including such old ones as "Hugh of Lincoln," "Lamkin," "The Farmer's Curst Wife," "Lord Beekman," and "Lord Randall."
The first that Everett Pitt sang for me was "The Butcher Boy from Jersey City." Perhaps it is the nearness of the place that has made this particular ballad stick in the memories o£ so many people in this region. Jersey City is only about fifty miles from the farthest of these localities. Certainly, as far as my hunting has gone, Barbara Allen, Lord Randall, and Lord Lovell are characters by no means so well known to folks here as this nameless butcher boy.
__________________________
Footnotes:
1 Scarborough heard this song in Virginia with Jersey City as the locality (A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains, p. 285) , and Eddy reported it so from Ohio (Ballads and Songs from Ohio). Sandburg gives London City), (The American Songbag, p. 324), as does Scarborough in versions A, B, G, and H (A Song Catcher in the Southern Mountains). She also heard Johnson City (Version F) and New York City (Version C). In the Journal of the Folk-Sang Society, II (8), 159, R. Vaughn Williams reports a version, among "Songs Collected from Essex," that lays the scene in "Jessie's City."
2 This stanza, with variations, appears in many versions of this ballad and in quite unrelated songs. It occurs in the following from England: "The Bold Young Farmer," Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties, p. 9; "I Wish My Baby It Was Born," journal of the Folk-Song Society, III (12), 188; "In Jessie's City," Journal of the Folk-Song Society), U (8), 159; "Died for Love," Journal of the Folk-Song Society, II (8), 158; "Died for Love," English Traditional Songs and Carols, p. 92.
From America we have it in "Sweet William," in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, II, 84; and in Version D of "The Brisk Young Lover," pp. 76 ff. of the same; in "London City" in The American Songbag, p. 324: in versions B, C, D, and H of "The Butcher Boy" in A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains, pp. 284-288; in "The Sailor Boy," in The Maine Woods Songster, p. 59; and in "There Is a Tavern in the Town," in College Songs, a Scarborough's version B has "a strange home" (A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains, pp. 28-30). "The Brisk Young Lover" says simply "a house" (English Folk Songs from the Southem Appalachians, II, 76 11.) . In Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties, p. 9, the bold young farmer goes to an inn, as does the postman boy in "In Jessie's City," in the Joumal of the Folk·Song Society, II, {8) , 159.
3. Kidson's "My True Love Once He Courted Me" (Traditional' Tunes, p. 44) has him go to an alehouse. There is, of course, an obvious resemblance to the old "There Is a Tavern in the Town," which was revived as a popular song a few years ago. In College Songs, published in 1890, this song is given with a footnote saying that it was copyrighted in 1883 by William H. Hills.
4. Scarborough gives a similar stama in Version D of "The Butcher Boy" (A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains, pp. 285-286) and says that it is a borrowing from "Careless Love." It appears in Downes and Siegmeister's version of "Careless Love" (A Treasury of American Song, p. 254), but not in Sandburg's version (The American Songbag, p. 21) . Gardner and Chickering have an apron stanza in their A version of "The Butcher Boy" (Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan); Sharp reports similar lines in "Every Night When the Sun Goes In" (English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians). The idea of his having followed her through frosty weather shows up without the apron lines in the English "My True Love Once He Courted Me" (Traditional Tunes, p. 44) . It is combined with the money problem in Hudson's version of "The Butcher's Boy" (Folksongs of Mississippi).
5 This wishful thinking about the ruenning of the other girl's wealth is in versions in various collections: English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, II, 76 ff.; Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties, Book II of the Folk Songs of England series, p. 9; "Traditional Tunes, p. 44; The American Songbag, p. 324; A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains, pp. 283, 285, 287; and Journal of the Folk-Song Society, II (8), 159.
6 An article entitled "Traditional Texts and Tunes," by Albert H. Tolman and Mary 0. Eddy, in the Jounral of American Folklore, XXXV, says: "A slip recently acquired by the Harvard College Library (no imprint) carries the date of the piece back to the eighteenth century." Linscott says, in Folk Songs of Old New England, that "The Butcher Boy" is "said to have originated in Essex County, England. In its earlier form, it goes back to the seventeenth century."
Gardner, Emdyn E., and Chickering, Geraldine J. Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1939.
Hudson, Arthur Palmer. Folksongs of MississipfJi. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1936.
Kidson, Frank. Traditional Tunes. Oxford: Taphouse &: Son, 1891.
Linscott, Eloise H. Folk Songs of Old New England. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1939.
Sandburg, Carl. The American Songbag. New York: Harcourt: Brace &: Co., 1927.
Scarborough, Dorothy. A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains. New York: Columbia University Press, 1937.
Sharp, Cecil J. English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. London: Oxford University Press, 1932.
Sharp, Cecil J. Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties, Book II of the Folk Songs of England series. London: Novello and Co., Ltd., 1908.
Waite, Henry Randall. College Songs. Boston: Oliver Ditson Company, 1890.