Butcher Boy- Amos Eaton (RI) 1945 Flanders REC
[From a digitized archival cassette in the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College Special Collections & Archives. Track 09 : Butcher Boy - voice performance by Amos Eaton at S Royalton (Vt.). Classification #: LAP24. Dated 08-12-1945.
Has two UK stanzas: stanza 1 last two line are Brisk Young Sailor; last stanza I Wish I Wish with modified ending.
R. Matteson 2017]
Butcher Boy- Amos Eaton at S. Royalton (Vt.) on August, 12, 1945. Complete transcription R. Matteson 2017.
In New York Jersey there did dwell
A butcher boy and I knew him well
He courted me with his own free will
Where e'er he goes I love him still.
There was a girl in that same town,
My true love goes and he sits him down
He takes her too upon his knee
And he tells to her what he once told me.
Oh mother oh mother you do not know,
What pain and grief and sorrow, woe,
She took a chair and she set her down,
With pen and ink to write it down.
With every word she said, "Oh dear,"
With every line she dropped a tear,
She went upstairs to make her bed
And nothing to her mother said.
Her tender father came home at noon,
Inquired for his daughter soon,
He went upstairs and he burst the door
And he found her hanging to the floor.
He took his knife and he took her down
And in her bosom these words he found:
You'll dig my grave both wide and deep,
Lay a marble stone at my head and feet,
And on my bosom a turtle dove,
To show to the world that I died of love.
I wish I wish but I wish in vain,
I wish she were alive again,
But alive again she ne'er will be,
Till an orange grows on an apple tree.