Butcher Boy- Virginia Ransom (KY-WV) 1917 Cox B
[From John Harrington Cox, Folk Songs of the South, 1925. His notes follow. Cox's notes follow. Cox's notes are not accurate since he didn't know all the underlying broadsides. His attribution of Sweet William and Sheffield Park as sources are wrong (although there are some shared stanzas) and "Squire's Daughter" is a poor source for suicide stanzas.
This version dates back well into the 1800s and is similar to, or based on, the 1860s print versions.
R. Matteson 2017]
THE BUTCHER BOY
Three variants have been found in West Virginia, none of them perfect. Jersey City, New York City, and London City claim in turn this famous butcher boy. "The Butcher Boy" is made up of modified extracts from (1) "Sheffield Park";[1] (2) "The Squire's Daughter"[2] (called also "The Cruel Father, or, Deceived Maid"[3] ); (3) "A Brisk Young Sailor" (or its abbreviated version, "There is an alehouse in yonder town"[4]); and (4) "Sweet William" ("The Sailor Boy"[5]). To (1) it owes stanzas 1 and 4; to (2), stanzas 6 and 7; 1 and 2 to (3), stanzas 2, 3, and 8; to (4), stanza 5. For American texts and for references, British and American, see Journal, xxix, 169; xxxi, 73; xxxv, 360; Pound, No. 24; Lomax, p. 397 ("Rambling Boy"); Minish MS., 111, 49.
B. "The Butcher Boy." Communicated by Professor C. E. Haworth, Huntington, Cabell County, 1917; obtained from Miss Virginia Ransom, who got it from a woman servant who had lived in Kentucky.
1 In New York City used to dwell
A butcher boy I loved so well;
He courted me my life away,
And then with me he would not stay.
2 There was a strange girl in that town,
My love he goes and sits him down,
And takes that strange girl on his knee,
And tells to her what he won't tell me.
3 O Grace[6], O Grace, I'll tell you why :
Because she has more gold than I;
Gold will rust and silver fly,
And then she'll be poor as I.
4 She ran upstairs to fix her bed,
And nothing to her ma she said.
'And when her father he came home" (De Marsan)[7].
5 They went upstairs and went and looked,
They found her hanging by a rope;
They took and cut her down,
And in her bosom these words they found :
6 "Go dig my grave both long and deep,
And place marble stones at my head and feet,
And across my breast place a turtle dove,
To show this world I died for love."
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Footnotes:
1 Broadsides (Catnach; Jackson & Son, Birmingham); Gillington, Eight Hampshire Folk-Songs, p. 14.
2 Broadside (W. Shelmerdine & Co., Manchester).
3 Slip without imprint (eighteenth or early nineteenth century).
4 See p. 427. s See p. 353.
5. [missing]
6. in UK "A grief a grief"
7. Added by Cox from broadside. That line (3rd) should be removed.