Black Birds- Lura Wagoner (NC) 1913 Brown L
[From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Volume 2, 1952. Their notes follow.
One of two Brown versions of a ballad Renwick calls "Oh willie" but has been traced to "Cruel Father" ballads where her young lover is sent to sea and dies by a cannonball.
R. Matteson 2017]
The Butcher Boy
The British antecedents and the currency in modern tradition of this ballad are given in some detail in BSM 201-3. To the references there given should be added Lincolnshire (ETSC 92-5), Essex (FSE 11 g-n), Massachusetts (FSONE 179-81), New York (NYFLQ III 29-30), Virginia (FSV 72-5; a trace of it in SharpK II 381), Kentucky (FSKM 30-1), Florida (FSF 334-6), Arkansas (OFS I 230), Missouri (OFS i 226-30), Ohio (BSO 129-31), Indiana (BSI 198-201), and Michigan (BSSM 117-19). Mrs. Steely found it in the Ebenezer community in Wake county. Not versions of 'The Butcher Boy' strictly speaking, but related to it are 'She's Like the Swallow,' reported from Newfoundland (FSN 112), 'The Auxville Love,' reported from Kentucky (FSMEU 205), 'Love Has Brought Me to Despair,' reported from West Virginia (FSS 428-9), and 'I Am a Rambling Rowdy Boy,' reported from North Carolina (SSSA 173-4). 'The Butcher Boy' was printed as a stall ballad by Partridge of Boston and by De Marsan and Wehman of New York, and Kittredge has noted (JAFL XXXV 361) that it is to be found in five American song-books published between 1869 and 1914. Its appearance in print is as likely to be the effect as the cause of its wide popularity. The scene is most often Jersey City, but it may be any one of a considerable number of cities or may be unspecified. A peculiarity of nearly all the texts reported is the illogical shift of grammatical person — it begins as a narrative by the girl and passes, at different places in different texts but generally about the middle of the story, to third-person narration about the girl. The texts in our collection, one is surprised to find, never locate the action in Jersey City; the scene is Boston town or Johnson City or New York City or Jefferson City or London City; and in only three of them is the faithless lover a butcher boy.
Elements of 'The Butcher Boy' enter into combination with elements of other ballads and songs. Some composites of this sort are given after the more normal 'Butcher Boy' texts. For some others, see 'The Sailor Boy' C, D, I, and J (no. 104, below), and 'Little Sparrow' F, in Vol. III.
L. "Black Birds.' Another text from Miss Wagoner's manuscript book, still further removed from the ordinary form. This is essentially the same as 'The Wrecked and Rambling Boy' reported by Hudson from Mississippi, JAFL xxxix 124-5.
1 I wish I was a blackbird among the rush;
I'd change my home from bush to bush
That the world might see
That I love sweet Willie, but he don't love me.
2 She wrote him a letter with her own right hand,
She sent it to him by her own command,
Saying, 'Oh, Willie, go, go read these lines;
They may be the last you will ever read of mine."
3 Her father came home a-purpose to know
If she was loving that young man.
So he ripped, he tore among them all.
He swore he'd fire his pistol ball.
4 Her father came home that very next night
Inquiring for his heart's delight.
He ran upstairs and the door he broke;
He saw her hand beyond a rope.
5 He drew his knife and he cut her down
And in her bosom these lines he found :
'Go, dig my grave both deep and wide
And bury sweet Willie so near my side.'
6 Well, now she's dead and under ground
While all her friends go mourning around.
And o'er her grave flew a little white dove
To show to the world that she died for love.