Butcher's Boy- James York (NC) 1939 Brown B
[From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Volume 2, 1952. Their notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
The Butcher Boy
The British antecedents and the currency in modern tradition of this ballad are given in some detail in BSM 201-3. To the references there given should be added Lincolnshire (ETSC 92-5), Essex (FSE 11 g-n), Massachusetts (FSONE 179-81), New York (NYFLQ III 29-30), Virginia (FSV 72-5; a trace of it in SharpK II 381), Kentucky (FSKM 30-1), Florida (FSF 334-6), Arkansas (OFS I 230), Missouri (OFS i 226-30), Ohio (BSO 129-31), Indiana (BSI 198-201), and Michigan (BSSM 117-19). Mrs. Steely found it in the Ebenezer community in Wake county. Not versions of 'The Butcher Boy' strictly speaking, but related to it are 'She's Like the Swallow,' reported from Newfoundland (FSN 112), 'The Auxville Love,' reported from Kentucky (FSMEU 205), 'Love Has Brought Me to Despair,' reported from West Virginia (FSS 428-9), and 'I Am a Rambling Rowdy Boy,' reported from North Carolina (SSSA 173-4). 'The Butcher Boy' was printed as a stall ballad by Partridge of Boston and by De Marsan and Wehman of New York, and Kittredge has noted (JAFL XXXV 361) that it is to be found in five American song-books published between 1869 and 1914. Its appearance in print is as likely to be the effect as the cause of its wide popularity. The scene is most often Jersey City, but it may be any one of a considerable number of cities or may be unspecified. A peculiarity of nearly all the texts reported is the illogical shift of grammatical person — it begins as a narrative by the girl and passes, at different places in different texts but generally about the middle of the story, to third-person narration about the girl. The texts in our collection, one is surprised to find, never locate the action in Jersey City; the scene is Boston town or Johnson City or New York City or Jefferson City or London City; and in only three of them is the faithless lover a butcher boy.
Elements of 'The Butcher Boy' enter into combination with elements of other ballads and songs. Some composites of this sort are given after the more normal 'Butcher Boy' texts. For some others, see 'The Sailor Boy' C, D, I, and J (no. 104, below), and 'Little Sparrow' F, in Vol. III.
B. 'The Butcher's Boy.' Collected from James York of Olin, Iredell county, in 1939. The same successions of events but with interesting differences in the telling. The shift of person comes earlier than in A.
1 In Johnson City where I did dwell
There lived a boy I loved so well.
He courted me my life away
And with me he would not stay.
2 There lived a girl in that same town
Where he would go and sit around.
He'd take that girl upon his knee
And tell her things that he wouldn't tell me.
3 I think I know the reason why.
Because she has more gold than I.
But gold will melt and silver will fly;
Some time she'll be as poor as I.
4 She went upstairs to make her bed
And nothing to her mother said.
Her mother said, 'You're acting queer.
What is the matter, my daughter dear?'
5 'Oh, mother dear, you need not know
The pain and sorrow, grief and woe.
Give me a chair and set me down,
With pen and ink to write words down.'
6 It was late that night her father came home.
'Where is my daughter, where has she gone?'
Upstairs he run, the door he broke;
He found her swinging to a rope.
7 He took his knife and cut her down
And in her bosom this letter was found :
'A very foolish girl I am
To hang myself for the butcher's boy.
8 'Must I go bound while he goes free.
Must I love a boy that don't love me?
Alas! alas! that never can be
Till oranges grow on an apple tree.[1]
9 'So bury me both wide and deep,
Place a marble stone at my head and feet.
And on my breast place a snow-white dove
To show to the world that I died for love.'
1. This stanza of the floating love lyric of the folk is likely to appear in various songs. It does not properly belong to 'The Butcher Boy.'