Butcher's Boy- Lillian Boswell (WY) 1914 Pound A
[American Ballads and Songs by Louise Pound, 1922.
R. Matteson 2017]
(A) The Butcher's Boy. Text obtained by Lillian Gear Boswell at Hartville, Wyoming, 1914.
In Jersey City where I did dwell
A butcher's boy I loved so well;
He courted me my heart away,
And now with me he will not stay.
There is a house in this same town,
Where my true love goes and sits him down,
He takes a strange girl on his knee,
And tells her what he won't tell me.
"Tis grief, 'tis grief, I'll tell you why,
Because she has more gold than I;
Her gold will melt and silver fly,
She'll see the day she's poor as I.
I went upstairs to make my bed,
And nothing to my mother said,
I took a chair and sit me down,
With pen and ink I wrote it down,
On every line I dropped a tear,
While calling home my Willy dear.
Her father he came home that night,
"Where, O where has my daughter gone?"
He went upstairs, the door he broke,
And found her hanging by a rope.
He took his knife to cut her down,
And on her bosom these lines he found:
"O what a foolish girl am I
To kill myself for a butcher's boy.
"Go dig my grave both wide and deep,
Place a marble stone at my head and feet.
Upon my breast a turtle dove
To show the world I died for love."