Jersey City- Melissa Moores (OH) 1939 Eddy A
[From: Ballads and Songs from Ohio, 1939 by Mary Eddy. Her notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
This song is widely known in Ohio. I am including only a few of those that have been contributed. Mrs. Moores knew no name for this, so I have supplied the correct one.
Other Texts-- Cox, No. 145, p. 340. / Dunstan, p. 42, under the title of "Betsey Watson" prints a song which, though unrelated a "Jersey City," makes use in its third stanza of the following:
There is a house in our town
Where my love goes, and sits him down,
And takes another girl on his knee;
Oh! don't you think its grief to me!
A. Jersey City- From Mrs. Melissa Moores, Perrysville, Ohio before 1939.
In Jersey City where I did dwell,
A butcher's boy I loved so well,
He courted me my heart away,
And now with me he will not stay.
2. There is an inn in this same town
Where my love goes and he sits down;
He takes a strange girl upon his knee,
And tells to her what he won't tell me.
3. It's grief for me, I'll tell you why,
Because she has more gold than I;
But her gold will melt and her silver fly,
And in time of need she'll be as poor as I.
4. I go upstairs to make my bed,
But nothing to my mother said;
My mother comes upstairs to me,
Saying, "What is the matter, my daughter dear?"
5. "Mother, mother, you do not know
What pain and grief and sorrow, woe;
Go get a chair and sit upon,
A pen and ink to write it down."
6. At the end of every line she dropped a tear,
While calling home her Willie dear;
And when her father he came home,
He says, "'Where is my daughter gone?"
7. He went upstairs, the door he broke,
And there he found her hanging from a rope;
He took his knife and cut her down,
And upon her breast these lines were found:
8. "Oh, what a silly maid am I,
To hang myself for a butcher's boy;
Go dig my grave both wide and deep,
Place a marble stone at my head and feet;
9. "And on my breast a turtle dove,
To show the world that I did love,
And on my breast a turtle dove,
To show the world that I did love."