Butcher Boy- Charles Fiddes Reid (Aber) c1915 Porter
[From Edinburgh; School of Scottish Studies; SA1972.214.B8
Listen:
http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/play/67407;jsessionid=6CF613437BEE4FA911A03428E60C3FCC
http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/fullrecord/67407/1
R. Matteson 2016]
Summary - The young butcher's apprentice meets a girl and persuades her to spend the night with him. When she becomes pregnant he refuses to marry her but takes her for a walk and stabs her to death. He is tried, found guilty and hanged.
The Butcher Boy- sung by Charles Fiddes Reid (b. 1907) of Crimond Aberdeenshire as recorded by Hamish Henderson; Prof. James Porter in 1972. Charles Reid heard this song from his grandmother when he was about eight, on holiday at Auchnagatt.
1. My parents gave me learning,
Good learning they gave unto me
And they sent me to a butcher's shop,
A butcher boy to be.
2 I fell in love with a nice young girl,
She'd a dark and a rolling e'e;
And I promised for to marry her,
If at length with me she'd lie.
3. This fair maid fell with child by me,
And upon me she would cry,
"O Billie dear do marry me
Or for you sake I would die."
4. "To marry you, to marry you,
I never intended to do,
Go home and tell your parents dear
To do their best for you."
5. "To go home and tell my parents dear
Would bring them to distress,
I would rather go and run myself,
In some dark lonely place."
6. My love he sent me a letter,
He sent it by his hand,
And he asked me for to meet him
Down by yon river strand.
7. We walk-ed east and we walk-ed down
And we walk-ed all along,
Till he drew a knife out from his breast,
And he stabbed her to the ground.
8. [He then went up to his mother's house[1],
'Tween the hours of twelve and one,
But little did that mother think,
What her only son had done.]
9. When his old mother asked him,
With stained his hands and clothes?
The answer that he gave to her was,
"A bleeding of the nose."
10. He asked her for a candle,
To light his way to bed.
And likewise for a handkerchief,
To roll around his head.
11. No sleep, no rest could this young man get,
No sleep, no rest could he find,
For he thought he saw the flames of hell,
Approaching on his mind.
12. The young man's trial then came on,
And the gallows be his doom,
For the murdering of sweet Mary Ann
Was the rose that was in bloom.