Butcher Boy- Jane Hicks Gentry (NC) 1916 Sharp B
[One stanza from Sharp's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians and the rest from his MS. Reprinted in Jane Hicks Gentry: A Singer Among Singers by Betty N. Smith.
This version is not based on the 1860s broadsides. The last stanza has part of the "Must I go bound" stanza.
R. Matteson 2017]
Butcher Boy- Jane Hicks Gentry Hot Springs, NC on August 23, 1916 Sharp B
In London city, where I did dwell
There's a butcher boy and I loved well.
I loved him till he broke my heart,
And now with me he will not stay.
There is a house in yonders town
Where my love goes and sits him down.
He takes a strange girl on his knee
And tells her what he won't tell me.
That troubles me and the reason why
Is because she has more gold than I,
But her gold will melt and her silver will fly,
But constant love will never die.
She went upstairs to make her bed
And not a word to her mother said.
When her mother come in, she says to her:
My Nellie Dear. O mother, O mother, you don't know
The grief and sorrow, pain and woe.
When her old father he came home
Enquiring for his Nellie dear,
He run upstairs and the door he broke
And there she's hanging by a rope.
He took his knife and he cut her down.
And in her busom this letter was found.
It's take this letter and read these lines,
For this is the last you'll read of mine.
Must I go bound, must I go free,
Must I love a young man that won't love me?
O no, O no, that never shall be,
Till apples grow on an orange tree.