Butcher Boy- Ellen Bigney (NS) 1919 Mackenzie A
[Excerpt from Quest of the Ballad by William Roy Mackenzie, 1919. Also in Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia, 1928 where the second stanza is left off and two other lines changed. See footnotes.
Mackenzie, who dedicated Ballads and Sea Songs to Kittredge, uses Kittredge's notes which should now be replaced with new info. Mackenzie gives another stanza which he can't recall the source but can recall the text:
I wish my baby it was born,
And sitting upon it's father's knee,
And I myself was in my grave grave,
Perhaps then he would think of me.
This is an excellent older version that has nothing to do with the print versions of the 1860s.
R. Matteson 2017]
[Excerpt] I have recently copied it down from the singing of one who regarded it with seriousness, and shall now present it in order to illustrate the sort of qualities that cause the ballad to be regarded with merriment in civilized communities. Those who read it will be inclined to laugh rather than to weep, and will thus, perhaps, be able to understand the reticence of the present-day singer who loves and honors his ballads.
In London town, where I did dwell,
A butcher boy I loved him well.
He courted me for many a day,
He stole from me my heart away.
I mind the time, not long ago[1],
He'd follow me through frost and snow.
But now he's changed his mind again.
He'll pass my door and he won't come in.
There is an inn in that same town,
And there my love he sits him down.
He takes a strange girl on his knee,
And tells her what he once told me.
But I can tell you the reason why[2]:
Because she's got more gold than I.
But gold will melt and silver fly.
She'll see the day[3] as poor as I.
I'll go upstairs and make my bed.
"There is nothing to do," my mother said.
My mother she has followed me,
Saying, "What is the matter, my daughter dear?"
Oh mother dear, you little know
What pains or sorrow or what woe.
So get a chair and sit me down.
With pen and ink I'll write all down.
She wrote a letter, she wrote a song.
She wrote a letter, she wrote it long.
On every line she dropped a tear,
At every verse cried, "Willie dear!"
Her father he came home that night
Enquiring for his heart's delight.
He went upstairs, the door he broke.
He found her hanging on a rope.
He took a knife and cut her down,
And in her bosom these lines he found:
"Oh what a foolish girl was I
To hang myself for a butcher boy.
"Go dig my grave both wide and deep.
Put a marble stone at my head and feet.
And on my grave place a turtle dove,
To show the world that I died of love."
It is hardly necessary to insist that this ballad was composed with the utmost seriousness and with the most complete sympathy for the poor maid whose affections were basely trifled with by the thoughtless and debonair butcher boy. Furthermore, it was composed for persons who would take a precisely similar view of the case, and who would agree with the composer or composers in feeling that the language employed for the setting forth of the tragedy was fitting and dignified. Presently, however, it falls into the hands of people who see something inherently comic in the spectacle of a girl bewailing the perfidy of a mere butcher's apprentice, and who have read magazines, newspapers, and other refined forms of literature sufficiently to conclude that the language of the ballad is quaint, old-fashioned, and absurdly naive. Small wonder, then, if the few people who know this ballad and others equally old-fashioned, and who regard them with real affection and esteem, should be extremely chary about subjecting them to the merriment of unsympathetic strangers in the outer world.
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Footnotes:
1. This stanza has been eliminated in Mackenzie's 1928 text. Although the stanza is corrupt it should be included.
2. 1928: The reason is, I'll tell you why, [better and authentic]
3. 1928: And in time of need be as poor as I,