Butcher Boy- Ida M. Cromwell (IO) c.1898 Rogers
[From: Songs I Sang on an Iowa Farm by Ida M. Cromwell, Eleanor T. Rogers, Tristram P. Coffin and Samuel P. Bayard; Western Folklore, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Oct., 1958), pp. 229-247+312; Published by: Western States Folklore Society. Coffin and Bayard's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
Ida M. Cromwell begins the article: "THE SONGS I HAVE RECOLLECTED were used in all the entertainments the young
people had in central Iowa over sixty years ago."
THE BUTCHER BOY (Laws P-24)
Laws, ABBB, 260, and Belden, 201o f., print extensive notes to this popular story of thwarted love and tragedy. Stout, 37, records it from Iowa. The tune, probably some form of the traditional British setting, is difficult to identify as it appears below.
[music]
In Jersey City where I did dwell,
Lived a butcher boy I loved so well.
He courted me, stole my heart away,
And now with me he will not stay.
There is an inn in that same town,
Where my lover goes and sits him down.
He takes strange girls upon his knee,
And he tells to them what he once told me.
'Tis a grief to me, and I'll tell you why,
Because she has more gold than I.
But her gold will melt and her silver fly,
And in time of need, she'll be poor as I.
I went upstairs to make my bed,
And nothing to my mother said.
My mother she came up to me,
Saying, "What's the matter, my daughter dear?"
Then my father he came home,
Saying "Where is my daughter gone?"
He went upstairs, and the door he broke,
He found her hanging by a rope.
He took his knife and cut her down,
And on her breast these lines he found:
"O what a silly girl am I,
To hang myself for a butcher boy.
"Go dig my grave both wide and deep,
Place a mark stone at my head and feet.
And on my breast place a turtle dove,
To show the world I died of love."