In Johnson City- Minnie Church (NC) 1930 Brown I
[Single stanza only in Brown, remainder from Abram's MS. From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Volume 2, 1952. Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
The Butcher Boy
The British antecedents and the currency in modern tradition of this ballad are given in some detail in BSM 201-3. To the references there given should be added Lincolnshire (ETSC 92-5), Essex (FSE 11 g-n), Massachusetts (FSONE 179-81), New York (NYFLQ III 29-30), Virginia (FSV 72-5; a trace of it in SharpK II 381), Kentucky (FSKM 30-1), Florida (FSF 334-6), Arkansas (OFS I 230), Missouri (OFS i 226-30), Ohio (BSO 129-31), Indiana (BSI 198-201), and Michigan (BSSM 117-19). Mrs. Steely found it in the Ebenezer community in Wake county. Not versions of 'The Butcher Boy' strictly speaking, but related to it are 'She's Like the Swallow,' reported from Newfoundland (FSN 112), 'The Auxville Love,' reported from Kentucky (FSMEU 205), 'Love Has Brought Me to Despair,' reported from West Virginia (FSS 428-9), and 'I Am a Rambling Rowdy Boy,' reported from North Carolina (SSSA 173-4). 'The Butcher Boy' was printed as a stall ballad by Partridge of Boston and by De Marsan and Wehman of New York, and Kittredge has noted (JAFL XXXV 361) that it is to be found in five American song-books published between 1869 and 1914. Its appearance in print is as likely to be the effect as the cause of its wide popularity. The scene is most often Jersey City, but it may be any one of a considerable number of cities or may be unspecified. A peculiarity of nearly all the texts reported is the illogical shift of grammatical person — it begins as a narrative by the girl and passes, at different places in different texts but generally about the middle of the story, to third-person narration about the girl. The texts in our collection, one is surprised to find, never locate the action in Jersey City; the scene is Boston town or Johnson City or New York City or Jefferson City or London City; and in only three of them is the faithless lover a butcher boy.
Elements of 'The Butcher Boy' enter into combination with elements of other ballads and songs. Some composites of this sort are given after the more normal 'Butcher Boy' texts. For some others, see 'The Sailor Boy' C, D, I, and J (no. 104, below), and 'Little Sparrow' F, in Vol. III.
I. 'In Johnson City.' Obtained from Mrs. Minnie Church of Heaton, Avery county, in 1930. Here again the scene with the mother is omitted; and it ends without the funeral directions:
1. In Johnson City there once did dwell,
A brown-eyed boy I loved so well
He courted mt my life away,
And then with me he would not stay.
2. I loved that boy I loved him well[1],
I loved him more than tongue could tell
I loved my father, my mother too,
But I'd leave them both and go with you.
3 There lived a girl in that same town,
He'd go right there and sit down,
He'd take this girl upon his knee
He'd tell he t thi9ngs, he wouldn't tell me.
4 Oh! girl oh girl, I'll tell you why
You have more gold and silver than I;
Your gold will melt, your silver will fly,
You'll see the day you [are] as poor as I.
5 Twas late in the night her father come home,
He wondered where his daughter had gone,
He went upstairs the door he broke,
He found her hanging by a rope.
6. He took his knife and he cut her down,
And in her bosom these words he found:
'Just think what a foolish girl I am
To kill myself for a gambling man.'
1. The first two lines from the broadside "Nelly's Constancy," the last two found in "Rambling Boy" other broadsides.