Butcher's Boy- Lillian Corbin (NC) 1931 Scarborough G
[From Dorothy Scarborough; A Song Catcher in the Southern Mountains, 1938. Date established by Bronson as c.1931. Her notes follow,
R. Matteson 2017]
This hard-hearted young fellow who makes himself so much at home, is sung about in High Hampton, North Carolina, where Mrs. Lillian Corbin told me the song as she knew it.
(G) Butcher's Boy
In London City where I did dwell
There lives a butcher I loved so well.
He courted me my heart away
And then with me he would not stay.
There was another girl in that same town,
He tuck her up and seated her down,
He kept her sitting on his knee
And told her things he wouldn't tell me.
Oh, grief, oh, grief, I'll tell you why,
She has more gold and silver than I.
But gold will melt and silver fly,
In three or four years she'll be as poor as I.
Must I go bound while ye go free?
Must I love a boy that don't love me?
Alas, alas, that shall never be
Till apples grow on a sycamore tree.
He went upstairs, the door he broke,
And found her hanging by a rope.
And on her breast a note was found.
He tuck his knife and cut her down.
A foolish girl I am, you know,
To hang myself for the butcher's boy.