Bluegrass Messengers

Butcher Boy- Amelia Kinslow (NL) 1959 Peacock

[From: Songs Of The Newfoundland Outports, Volume 3, pp.707-708, by The National Museum Of Canada (1965) by Kenneth Peacock.

R. Matteson 2017]

Butcher Boy- Amelia (Wallace) Kinslow [1903-1985] of Isle aux Morts, NL, 1959. Collected by Peacock.

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.

There is a girl all in this town,
Where my love goes and sits right down;
He takes a strange girl upon his knee,
And he tells to her what he don't tell me.

A grief to me, I'll tell you why,
Because she has more gold than I;
Her gold will waste and her silver fly,
In times of need, she'll be as poor as I.

Go and get a chair and sit me down,
And pen and ink for to write it down;
On every line, she dropped a tear,
On every verse crying, "Willie dear!"

He went upstairs and the door he broke,
He found her hanging all from a rope;
He took his knife and cut her down,
And in her bosom those lines were found:

"Oh, what a silly girl am I,
To hang myself for a butcher boy."
And on her breast those lines were found,
To show the world that she died for love.