Blue-eyed Boy: Nita Stebbins (MO) 1909 Belden D
[From Belden; "Ballads and Songs," 1940. His notes follow. Both stanzas are found in in mid-1700s broadsides, The Unfortunate Swain/Picking Lilies. "Must I Go Bound" is frequently part of the American versions.
R. Matteson 2017]
The Blue-Eyed Boy
Here divers images or motifs seem to have been gathered around a refrain stanza which gives the name to the song. I have found. it reported from else-where only in Nebraska (ABS 272-3). In A the refrain stanza is not marked as such and the other elements are the hand and lips image (vaguely remembered from The Lass of Roch Royal), the turtle dove, the green willow tree, and 'Must I go bound while he goes free?';[1] in B, the lover going to sea, the value of a true friend., the little bird, and the refrain stanza; in C, the harp hung on the willow tree (which here has thrust the 'blue-eyed boy' stanza from its place as refrain),'Must I go bound and you go free?', the value of a true friend, and the turtle dove. D lacks the 'blue-eyed boy' altogether, but I have included it here because of the 'Must I go bound' stanza; the other stanza belongs to the tradition of 'There is an Alehouse in Yonder Town,' for which see the headnote to The Butcher Boy.
D. No title. Secured by Miss Hamilton in 1909 from Nita Stebbins of the West Plains High School, who described it as 'a country dance' which she learned, from an old woman who used to live in the country.'
As I walked out one morning in May
Gathering flowers all so gay,
I gathered white and I gathered blue
And little did I think what love could do.
Must I go bound, must you go free,
Must I love a pretty girl that won't love me?
Oh, no! no! it never can be,
For love like thee never conquered me.
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1. Known also in Dorsetshire (JFSS VII 69), Virginia (TBV 269-70, SCSM 284-5 319), and North Carolina (BMFSB 50-1, SCSM 288 288). It goes back at least to the seventeenth century; see Ronburghe Ballads YII 104-5.