Butcher Boy- Mrs. J. Bulson (NY) 1947 Lutz E
[Single stanza with music from Ballad of the Butcher Boy in the Rampano Mountains by Anne Lutz, NYFS, New York Folklore Quarterly - Volume 3, 1947. Her notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
Butcher Boy- Transcribed by Aletta Hopper from the singing of Mrs. J. Bulson, Stony Pt., N. Y.
In Jersey City where I did dwell,
A butcher boy I loved so well,
He courted me my life away,
And now with me he will not stay.
The people who know such old songs as this are not all back in the hills. In fact, the people who have stayed back in the hills, in this section of the New York--New Jersey border country, seem for the most part to have memories in proportion to their ambition- not very great. Gill Pitt, for example, can recall only a line or two here and there when prompted; his younger half-brother, Everett, who has moved from the hills to a small farm in the Saddle River valley down in Jersey, has sung more than fifty songs for me, including such old ones as "Hugh of Lincoln," "Lamkin," "The Farmer's Curst Wife," "Lord Beekman," and "Lord Randall."
The first that Everett Pitt sang for me was "The Butcher Boy from Jersey City." Perhaps it is the nearness of the place that has made this particular ballad stick in the memories o£ so many people in this region. Jersey City is only about fifty miles from the farthest of these localities. Certainly, as far as my hunting has gone, Barbara Allen, Lord Randall, and Lord Lovell are characters by no means so well known to folks here as this nameless butcher boy.