There is a Town Where I Did Dwell- Tingle (NC) 1927 Brown G
[My date-- Boyd made other contributions in 1927. From Brown Collection of NC Folklore Volume 2, Ballads, 1952. Their (Belden and all) notes follow. The first and second stanzas are from Butcher Boy but the text is not included.
R. Matteson 2017]
Brown Collection Notes:
104 The Sailor Boy
This song was printed by Catnach and Such and probably by other ballad printers in England in the last century and is widely known and sung. See BSM 186, and add to the references there given Maine (MWS 56-9), Virginia (FSV 108-11, 118), North Carolina (BMFSB 24-5, SFLQ v 146), Arkansas (OFS I 300), Missouri (OFS I 296-300), Ohio (BSO 97-103), Indiana (BSI 269-70), Illinois (JAFL XL 235-6), and Michigan (BSSM 94, blended with 'The Butcher Boy'). Barry listed it among the ballads in his collection from the North Atlantic States but did not print it. Like other items of the folk song of unhappy love its content is likely to vary; with its central images of the girl bidding her father build her a boat and later demanding of the sailors she meets news of her sailor boy may be combined motives from 'The Butcher Boy,' 'Little Sparrow,' 'The Lass of Roch Royal,' or an elaborate preliminary story may be provided as in version L below.
G. 'There is a Town Where I did Dwell.' Secured by Julian P. Boyd from Jeannette Tingle, one of his pupils at the Alliance school in Pamlico county. Four stanzas, of which the first two are a modified form of the opening of 'The Butcher Boy' and the other two are the regular queries of our song, except that she asks, not her father, but the captain to build her a ship:
3 'Oh, captain, captain, tell me true.
Does my dear sailor boy sail with you?'
'No, no, he does not sail with me;
I fear he's drowned in the sea.'
4 'Oh, captain, captain, build me a ship
That I may sail the ocean wild
And search each ship that passes by,
And be a sailor boy till I die.'