Billy Boy- Barnett (MO) 1913 Belden A
[From Ballads and Songs collected by the Missouri Folk-lore Society- edited Belden 1940.
R. Matteson 2014]
A. 'Billy Boy.' Reported by Mrs. George H. Barnett in 1913 as sung by Mrs. Sarah Henry, who learned it in Saline County about 1865-70. The repeats, printed here in the first stanza only, run thruout.
'Where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy,
Where have you been, charming Billy?'
'I've been to seek a wife, she's the joy of my life,
She's a young thing, too young to leave her mother.'
'Did she bid you come in?'
'She bade me come in, with a dimple in her chin,'
'Did she set you a chair?'
She sat me on a chair with a courteous so near,'[1]
'Did she sit close to you?'
'She sat as close to me as the bark on a tree,'
'Did she light you to bed?'
'She lit me to bed with a nightcap on her head,'
'Can she make a cherry pie?'
'She can make a cherry pie as quick as a cat can wink its eye,'
'How tall is she?'
she's as tall as any pine and as straight as a pumpkin vine,'
'How old is she?'
'She's twice six, twice seven, twice twenty, and eleven,'
*So in Mrs. B.'s MS; probably curtsey and stare