Butcher's Boy- Vesta Belt (KS) 1957 O'Bryant
[From: Folksongs and Ballads of Kansas; Collected and performed by Kansas native Joan O'Bryant on Smithsonian Folkways, 1957. Catalog Number FW02134_102. A brief online bio follows.
Also recorded Joan O'Bryant and a video is on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5peSOLDs2ek
O'Bryant collected at least 3 other versions which are listed in her collection housed in Wichita.
R. Matteson 2017]
Joan O'Bryant was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1923. She attended Wichita University, where she graduated with of Masters of Arts in Creative Writing in 1949. After graduation she worked on plans for a folklore studies class. Soon after she was teaching folklore studies classes at the university, as well as in Pittsburg, Kansas and Gunnison, Colorado, during the summers. Joan O'Bryant was also an accomplished singer and guitar player and released two records of authentic folk music on Folkways Records in the late 1950s. O'Bryant was killed in an automobile accident near Ouray, Colorado in 1964.
Butcher's Boy- sung by Vesta Belt of Wichita Kansas who learned it from her mother Mrs. E. D. Massenger. as performed on youtube by Joan O'Bryant.
In Kansas city where I did dwell,
A butcher's boy I loved so well,
But he holds a strange girl upon knee,
And tells to her what he won't tell me.
I wish I was a turtle dove,
I'd fly away to the land of love,
And there I'd sit and mourn
For the loss of a true love that'll never return.
When I wore my apron low,
He followed me through frost and snow,
But now my apron's to my chin,
He passes my door and he won't come in.
Get me a chair to sit upon,
Pen and ink to write a song,
At every line I'll drop a tear,
At the end of every verse cry, "Oh, my dear."
Her father came home one evening late,
Inquiring for his daughter Kate;
They found her hanging from a rope,
And in her hand this note she'd wrote.
'Go dig my grave both wide and deep
Put marbles at my head and feet,
And on my breast a snow-white dove,
To let the world know I died for love."