Butcher Boy- old lady (NY-Birm) c.1860 Lutz A
[Single stanza from The Ballad of the Butcher Boy in the Rampano Mountains by Anne Lutz, NYFS, New York Folklore Quarterly - Volume 3, 1947.
Even though this is just a standard single stanza that fact that it was sung in Birmingham, England in the early 1860s is very important. It predates the US "Butcher Boy" broadsides c.1861 which proves that "Butcher Boy" originated in England and was brought to the US. The standard belief is that the Butcher Boy originated in the US from an English variant of Died for Love/Brisk Young Sailor. since the informant was in her 90s- say 94- and Lutz collected it in c.1946 the informant would have learned it in Birmingham about 1860 when she was 8 years old. The odds of her being influenced by the c. 1860 broadsides are slim.
R. Matteson 2017]
THE BALLAD OF THE BUTCHER BOY IN THE RAMAPO MOUNTAINS
ONCE THERE was in London a butcher boy who made love to a girl and left her, and she hanged herself. At least there is an English version of “The Butcher Boy” that begins:
In London town where I did dwell,
A butcher boy whom I knew well
He courted all my life away,
And now with me he will not stay.
That was sung for me by an old lady, now over ninety, who learned it as a child in Birmingham, England.