Butcher Boy- Lena Bourne Fish (NH) 1940 Flanders REC
[D04B, archival cassette dub from Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College Special Collections & Archives. Reconciled from two performances. Stanza 6 was not given in the second recording and stanza 5 was not given in the second. Clearly Lena worked on the ballad changing inn to tavern in the second stanza. There are some different textual variations in Fish's version (see stanza 4 and 6).
R. Matteson 2017]
Butcher Boy - voice performance by Lena Bourne Fish at E. Jaffrey (New Hampshire). Classification #: LAP24. Dated 1940 with a second recording dated 1943.
1. In Jersey City where I did dwell
A butcher boy I loved so well
He courted me, my heart away
And with me now, he will not stay.
2. There is a tavern in this old town
Where my love goes and sits him down
He'll take a strange girl on his knee
And tell her things that he once told me.
3. It is a grief to me and I'll tell you why,
Because she has more gold than I,
But gold will melt and silver fly,
And in time of need she'll be poor as I.
4. Oh mother, mother if you did not know
What grief and pain, what sorrow, woe,
At every turn of the road I see,
My lover's face looks down at me.
5. They[1] went upstairs and the door they broke
And found her hanging on a rope,
They took a knife and cut her down,
And in her bus[om] those lines were found.
6. O foolish foolish girl was I,
To hang myself for a butcher boy,
But what is life without its joy,
Though I died for love of a butcher boy.
7. Go dig my grave both long and deep,
Put a marble stone at my head and feet,
And on breast place a turtle dove,
To show the world that I died from love[2].
1. sings "she"
2. Last stanza in 1940 recording only.