Butcher Boy- Paul Peterson (RI) 1945 Flanders REC
[From a digitized archival cassette in the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College Special Collections & Archives. Track 23 : Butcher Boy - voice performance by Paul Peterson at Providence (Ri.). Classification #: LAP24. Dated 1945. Jan 28, 1945.
This has the UK "alehouse" stanza- different than the print versions.
R. Matteson 2017]
Butcher Boy- sung by Paul Peterson at Providence, Rhode Island on Jan. 28, 1945. Complete transcription R. Matteson 2017.
in Jersey City where I used to dwell
Lived a butcher boy that I loved so well
He courted me my life away
And now with me he will not stay.
There is an alehouse in this town,
Where he used to go and he sits him down
He takes a strange girl on his knee
And he tells to her what he once told me.
Oh grief, oh grief I'll tell you why
Because she has got more gold than I
But gold will melt and silver fly
And then she'll be as no better than I.
So I went upstairs to make my bed
With nothing to my aching head[1].
My father came home that very same night
And asked where was his daughter gone;
He went upstairs, the door he broke
And he found her hanging on a rope.
He took his knife and he took her down
And one her bosom these words he found:
O what what a foolish girl and I
To kill myself for a Butcher boy.
1. usually "to my mother said"