Butcher Boy- Mr. Vaughan (MO) 1903 Belden B
[From Belden, Ballads and Songs; 1940. His extensive notes follow. The flower reference by Belden from an unknown song submitted by Barry (one stanza is given below) may be found in some UK versions and comes from "The Constant Lady and False-hearted Squire," also called "Oxfordshire Tragedy" by Louis Chappell. More extensive flower references are found in older antecedent, "The Deceased Maiden Lover (w/Chorus) broadside c. 1628 which is a rewrite of lutenist Robert Johnson's circa 1611 song of 4 stanzas (w/chorus) titled, “A Forsaken Lover's Complaint.” Two different yet parallel ballads, "The Deceased Maiden Lover," and "The Faithlesse Lover"(see woodcut above) were printed together on a single sheet by "the Assignes of Thomas Symcocke" about 1628. Both broadsides have contributed stanzas to "Constant Lady." The heart-ease is the flower that cures broken-hearts.
Belden's notes are incorrect in some places- see my headnotes.
R. Matteson 2017]
Belden's Notes: Ballads and Songs, 1940:
The Butcher Boy
For evidence of the popularity of this ballad in stall and songbook print see Kittredge's notes in JAFL XXIX 1?0 and XXXV 361. He suggests that it is an amalgamation of 'The Cruel, Father, or Deceased Maid,' and, 'There is an Alehouse in Yonder Town,' both English. The combination, however, seems to be rather definitely an American product. In its 'regular' form, as printed by
De Marsan, Partridge, Wehman, and in many songbooks, a girl, who lives in Jersey City, tells how she loves a butcher boy, who has transferred his amours to another girl 'because she has more gold than I;' foretells that he wilt cease to love this other girl when her gold is gone; goes upstairs to make her bed, lamenting to her mother and bidding her bring a chair, pen, ink, and paper; then (with a sudden shift to third person narration) her father comes home, breaks open her door, finds her hanging in a rope, cuts her down, and in her bosom finds a letter giving directions for her burial, including the placing on her breast of a turtle dove 'to show the world I died for love.' Most of the elements of the story are to be found in more than one British ballad. The location in Jersey City is, of course, American (the 'in Jessie's city' of the Essex text in JFSS II 159 looks as if this text had traveled back from America to England); but it is 'in London city' in texts from Nova Scotia, Vermont, Virginia, and Tennessee, 'in Dublin city' in Ontario and one text from Nova Scotia, 'in New York City' in one of the West Virginia and. one of the Iowa
texts, 'in Jefferson city' in two Illinois texts, 'in yonder city' in Georgia, and 'down in a village' in Mississippi. The location is Sheffield park in Pitts's broadside of that title, which comes closest of all British stall prints to the American ballad and is current also orally in Hampshire (Gillington, Eight Hampshire Folk Songs No. 7). A Dorset text has 'in Yorkshire Park.' The 'butcher boy' is only American, but is remarkably constant in American texts in English analogs he is 'a brisk young lad,' 'a sailor lad', 'a rambling boy,' and the like (in the Essex text mentioned above he is 'a postman boy'). The tavern (inn, alehouse) is English; American texts of The Butcher Boy have either no localization of the young man's second. amours or a vague, town, or 'house' (exceptions are Nova Scotia A, Ontario, Iowa A B H, and the Nebraska text in ABS 62-this last not strictly a text of. The Butcher Boy. The girl's suicide by hanging appears in The Rambling Boy (Pitts), The Cruel Father (Harvard Library, no imprint), and in oral tradition in Lincolnshire (JFSS II 293-4, a version of Early, Early in the Spring[Kidson]), Essex (JFSS II 159-600, in Jessie's City), and Dorset (JFSS VII 46-51 The concluding stanza in which the girl gives directions for her burial is likely to appear in almost any ballad ending in a death. Missouri C has in its third stanza (see below) an item which I have found in only two other traditional texts of the Butcher Boy but which is of frequent occurrence elsewhere: in Dorset (JFSS V 188-9) There was Three Worms on Yonder Hill, fairly close in story to The Butcher Boy), perhaps in Lancashire (JFSS I 252-3) a text of There is an alehouse in Yonder Town in which Kidson has editorially filled in the places with other words), in Spaeth's text in weep some More, My Lady 728-9, in North Carolina (SharpK II 268, Every Night When the Sun Goes in), in the Appalachians (AMS 50, Careless Love) and in negro songs (JAFL XXIV 296, PFLST VII 99, ANFS 326-7, NS 194-5, and elsewhere). It is a riddling metonymy of a sort that the folk are fond of, like the sheath and knife figure in the Child ballad named therefrom. One other feature, frequent in English ballads having a similar story but not found in any text[1] of The Butcher Boy, should be mentioned. In two seventeenth century broadsides, The Deceased Maiden Lover and The Constant Lady and False-hearted Squire (Roxburghe Ballads I 260-2 and VIII 635-6), in Sheffield, Park (Pitts; also in oral tradition in Hampshire, see above), in Lancashire and Hertfordshire texts of A Brisk Young Sailor (JFSS V 183-9), in the Dorset There was Three Worms on Yonder Hill, in an Essex text of Died for Love (JFSS II 158-9)--all having a story something like that of The Butcher Boy--the girl does not hang herself but, like Ophelia, goes in search of flowers to cure the wounds of love[2] makes a bed of them, and dies thereon (or, sometimes, dies and is covered with flowers and grass by her loving mistress). This element appears also in an otherwise unrelated song from North Carolina, Dearest Billie (MSNC 7). The Butcher Boy, as distinct from other renderings of the same general situation, has been recorded from tradition in Essex (JFSS II 159), Nova Scotia (BSSNS 157-60, SBNS 33-4), Ontario (JAFL XXXI 79), Vermont (VFSB 115-6 ) , New Jersey (JAFL XLIV 76-7, XLV 78, FSSH 197-9), Pennsylvania (JAFL XXII 78, tune only), Virginia (FLJ VII 32, SCSM 282-6, Grapurchat for 25 August, 1932), West Virginia (FSS 480-2), Tennessee (JAFL XI:IV 77-8, FSSH 796-7 ), North Carolina (BMFSB 96-7, SCSM 287-8), Georgia (SharpK II 76-8, JAFI: XLV 72-9, FSSH 195-6), Mississippi (FSM 160), Missouri (Ozark Life Y No. 9), Ohio (JAFL XXIX 109, XXXV 360-1), Indiana (FSSH 199), Illinois (TSSI 146-9), Iowa (MAFLS XXIX 37-47), and Wyoming (ABS 60-2). Shearin's list shows that it is known also in Kentucky; and it is probable that it is current in many other parts of the country but has not been thought worthy of record. Spaeth (Weep Some More, My Lady 128-9) and Sandburg (ASb 324) give it without localization.
1. Rather, in any printed text. In two texts privately communicated to me by Barry in 1917, one from, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and one from Deerfieid, Massachusetts, the girl runs thru the meadows gathering flowers, for
There is a flower that I've heard say
'Tis called hearts-ease both night and day,
And if that flower I could find,
'Twould ease my heart and please my mind.
The former of these has also the 'apron high' motif.
2. The folklore of flowers and herbs is too complex and too vague to be dealt with here; see PMLA XXXIII 359-67. As de Gubernatis (Mythologie des Plantes I 131), Ovid knew that there were no simples that could cure these wounds:
Me miseram, quod amor non est medicabilis herbis Heroid. V 149
Ei mihi, quod nullis amor est sanabilis herbis Metam, I 523.
B. 'The Butcher Boy.' Secured in 1903 by W. S. Johnson from Mr. Vaughan, principal of the high school in Tuscumbia, Miller County.
[music]
1. In Jersey City where I did dwell
A butcher's boy I loved so well.
He courted me my life away,
And then with me he would not stay.
2. There is a house in yonder town
Where my love goes and sits around;
He takes strange girls upon his knee
And tells them that he don't love me.
3. But I can tell you the reason why:
They have more gold and silver than I.
Their gold it will melt, their silver fly;
In time of need they're poor as I.
4. I went upstairs to make my bed,
With nothing to do, my mother said.
She came upstairs and said to me,
'What can [be] the matter, my daughter, with thee?'
5. 'Oh, mamma dear, you do not know
What pain and sorrow I have known.
Go get a chair and sit me down.
A pen and ink for to write it down.'
6. With every line she dropped a tear
For calling back her Willie dear.
Her father came home and looking round.
Says he, 'Where can my daughter be found?'
7. He went upstairs, and the door he broke.
He found her hanging on a rope.
He took his knife and cut her down
And in her hands these words he found:
8. 'Go dig my grave, go dig it deep;
Place a marble stone at head and feet,
And upon my heart a turtle dove,
To show this world I died for love.'