Blue-Eyed Boy: Abrams (NC) c.1940 Brown B
[My date. Brown Collection Volume III, 1953. A Brown editor's notes follow. Abrams became an active collector when he started making his recordings about 1939.
R. Matteson 2017]
257. The Blue-Eyed Boy
One of those Protean folk-lyrics whose identity is hard to fix because they shift from text to text, taking on new elements and dropping old ones from the general reservoir of the folk fancy. What may however fairly be called forms of this song have been found in North Carolina '( BMFSB 50-1 ), Arkansas (OFS iv 262), Missouri (BSM 478-80. OFS iv 261), Indiana (BSI 339), and Nebraska (ABS 212-13). The two texts in our collection illustrate its instability.
B. "Blue-Eyed Boy." This second text is also from Professor Abrams, but bears no date nor any indicating of source. Here the right quatrain is marked as chorus.
1 Some say that low is pleasure.
But no pleasure do I see;
For the only boy I ever loved
Has gone square back on me.
Chorus: Oh, bring, me back my darling,
Oh, bring him back to me.
Oh, bring me back my darling;
He's all the world to me.
2 There's many a change in seasons,
Oh, there's many a change in sea;
And there's many a change in a young man's heart;
But there's no change in me.
3 Last night he came to see me;
Last night he smiled on me.
But tonight he's with another girl —
He cares no more tor me.
4 Oh, don't you remember
That night long, long ago
When he asked me to be his bride
Of course I answered No.
5 He's gone, though, now. God bless him,
He's mine where'er he be.
He may roam this wide world o'er and o'er
But he'll find no girl like me.