The Butcher Boy- (NY) H. De Marsan broadside 1860
[From de Marsan http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/static/images/sheets/10000/07749.gif
H. De Marsan, Publisher, 54 Chatham Street, New-York.
Very close to the Johnson broadside of the same date-- differing only by switching two words (do and you, first line- third stanza) and in capitalization and punctuation.
R. Matteson 2017]
The Butcher Boy.
In Jersey-city, where I did dwell,
A Butcher Boy I loved so well,
He courted me my heart away,
And now with me he will not stay.
There is an Inn in this same town,
Where my Love goes and sits him down;
He takes a strange girl on his knee,
And tells to her what he don’t tell me.
It’s a grief for me, I’ll tell you why,
Because she has more gold than I,
But her gold will melt, and her silver fly,
In time of need, she’ll be as poor as I.
I go up stairs to make my bed,
But nothing to my mother said,
My mother comes up stairs, to me
Saying, “What’s the matter, my daughter dear?”
Oh! mother, mother! you do not know
What grief, and pain, and sorrow, woe. .
Go get a chair to sit me down,
And a pen and ink to write it down.
On every line she dropped a tear,
While calling home her Willie dear!
And when her father he came home,
He said: Where is my daughter gone?
He went upstairs. . the door he broke. .
He found her hanging upon a rope;
He took his knife and he cut her down,
And, in her breast those lines were found:
Oh! what a silly maid am I,
To hang myself for a Butcher Boy!
Go dig my grave both long and deep;
Place a marble stone at my head and feet:
And on my breast a Turtle-Dove,
To show the world I died for love!