Butcher Boy- unknown (Aber) c1909 Greig F
[My date, location, from: The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection - Volume 2, p. 46; No. 200 by Gavin Greig, James Bruce Duncan, Patrick N. Shuldham-Shaw Emily B Lyle; Peter A Hall; Aberdeen U.P., 1983
R. Matteson 2016]
F. The Butcher Boy- unknown informant, assume is likley in Aberdeenshire, collected Grieg c. 1909.
1. My parents reared me tenderly,
Good learning they gave unto me
They sent me to a butcher's shop,
A butcher's boy for to be.
2. I fell in love with a nice young girl,
She had a dark and rolling eye;
I said that she must marry me,
Or for her sake I would die.
3. I went unto her mother's house,
Between the hours of eight and nine,
And asked her to take a walk
Down by yon river side.
4. They walked east and they walked west
And they walked all along,
Until he drew a knife from his breast,
And stabbed her to the bone.
5. She fell upon her bended knee,
And for mercy she did cry
"O Willie dear, don't murder me
And leave me here to die."
6. He took her by the milk-white hand,
And he dragged her on and on,
Until he came to yon running stream,
And he plunged her body in.
7. He went unto his mother's house
Between the hours of twelve and one:
O little did this poor woman think
What her only son had done.
8. The question she did put to him,
Why blood did stain his clothes
But the only answer he gave her
"'Twas a bleeding at the nose."
9. He asked for a candle,
To light him up to bed,
And likewise for a handkerchief,
To roll around his head.
10. No sleep, no rest, could that young man get,
No sleep, no rest could he find,
For the murdering of his pretty Mary Queen
And the gallows was his doom.