Sweet William- Mary Smith (NC) c.1875 Brown M
[From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Volume 2, 1952. Their notes follow. Thomas Smith and his brother R.E. Lee Smith moved to Palmyra Virginia where they made spurious contributions to Kyle Davis Jr. who published several of them in his More Trad Ballads of Virginia, 1960. Typical is Smith's claim that it's from a family member learned 40 years ago. The authenticity of his contributions to the Brown Collection must be considered to be suspect. This text however seems to be authentic.
The opening stanza is similar to Rambling Boy, my C.
An MS from Smith is found in the Abrams Collection, missing the first stanzas:
Sweet William
When sweet William came home at night
Inquiring for his heart's delight,
He ran upstairs, the door he broke,
Found her hung with her own bed rope.
He drew his knife, he cut her down,
And in her right hand this note he found:
'Go dig my grave both deep and wide
And bury sweet William by my side.'
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.
M. 'Sweet William.' From Thomas Smith, with the notation that it was "written down about July 1, 1915. By Miss Mae Smith of Sugar Grove, Watauga county, from the singing of her stepmother, Mrs. Mary Smith, who learned it over forty years ago." This is still further removed from the ordinary story; it begins in the first person of the man, who appears — the matter is not entirely clear — to be a faithful lover. At any rate, it is he that breaks down the door and finds the girl hanged. It is related to 'The Rambling Boy.'
I When I was a rake and a rambling boy,
My dying love both here and there.
A rake, a rake, and so I'll be,
Just like the night she courted me.
2 I wish I was some black thrush bird;
I'd change my note from bush to bush.
It's hard to love a pretty girl
That don't love me.
3 When sweet William came home at night
Inquiring for his heart's delight,
He ran upstairs, the door he broke,
Found her hung with her own bed rope.
4 He drew his knife, he cut her down,
And in her right hand this note he found :
'Go dig my grave both deep and wide
And bury sweet William by my side.'
5 The grave was dug, the corpse let down,
And all her friends stood weeping round.
Across the grave there flew a dove
To testify she died for love.