Butcher Boy- Edward Hartley (NS) 1929 Creighton
[From Helen Creighton's, Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, Toronto & Vancouver: J.M. Dent & Sons, Limited, (1932).
R. Matteson 2017]
Butcher Boy- sung by Mr. Edward Hartley, c.1929, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
1. In Jersey City where I once did dwell
A butcher boy he loved me well,
He courted me my life away
And with me now he will not stay.
2. There is a place in that same town
Where my love goes and he sits down,
He takes a strange girl on his knee
And tells her what he won't tell me.
3. Oh, mother dear, if you only knew
What sorrow and pain my heart doth know,
Give me a chair and sit me on
And a pen and ink till I write it down.
4. And she wrote a letter, she wrote it long,
She wrote it until she made a song,
On every line she shed a tear
And on every verse called Willie dear.
5. Her father came from work that night
Enquiring for his heart's delight,
He went upstairs, the door he broke,
He found her hanging to a rope.
6. He took his knife and cut her down
And in her bosom these lines he found,
Saying, "What a foolish girl was I
To hang myself for a butcher's boy."
7. "Dig me a grave and dig it deep,
Place a marble stone at my head and feet,
And on my breast place a turtle dove
To tell the world I died of love."