Butcher Boy- Bell Lambert (NC) 1943 Brown F
[No date given. From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Volume 2, 1952. Their notes follow.
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.
F. 'The Butcher Boy.' Yet another from Stanly county, obtained from Autie Bell Lambert. This introduces no new matter, but the arrangement differs from that in the preceding texts.
1 In New York 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,
2 He took a girl upon his knees
And told her just what he told me.
Shall 1 be young? Shall I be free?
Shall 1 love a boy that don't love me?
3 Oh. no, no, no, that shall not be.
For I am young and I can be free.
Oh, no, no, no, that shall never be,
For apples grows on a lily tree.
4 I went upstairs to make my bed
And nothing to my mother did I say.
My mother came upstairs to me
And said, 'What is matter, daring three?[1]
5 Oh, Willie, Willie, I tell you why;
Because she has more gold than I.
The gold will melt, silver will fly,
And she will be just as poor as I.
6 Father came and the door he broke
And found her hanging upon a rope.
He took his knife and cut her down
And in her bosom these words he found:
7 'Please dig my grave both wide and deep.
Place a marble stone on my head and feet.
Upon my heart a turtle dove,
To show this world I died for love.'
1. How this stanza should read may be seen in preceding versions. But what the contributor meant to write is not apparent.