The Cruel Father or Deceived Maid- broadside, Madden Collection, c.1790.
[Ref. Bob Thompson 1119; broadside from the Madden Collection, c.1790.
The importance of this broadside should not be underestimated. However, it really has little to do with forming the Butcher Boy- a common misconception precipitated by Cox, Kittredge and others. I have taken the liberty of supplying the missing first lines of stanza 2.
Cruel Father has a much different story than Butcher Boy and the other Died for Love versions (G, Queen of Hearts has borrowed two stanzas as an ending). Except for the opening lines, suicide and ending, it is a different ballad. The different titles include: "The Cruel Father or Deceived Maid," "Answer to Rambling Boy;" and "The Squire's Daughter." Cruel Father appears to have originated in the last half of the 1700s. A traditional English version titled "Isle of Cloy" was collected by E.J. Moeran in Suffolk in the 1930s. Cruel Father has these identifying characteristics with variation:
1) A maid, who is a squire's daughter near Auchnacloy falls in love with a prentice boy/rambling boy. When her "cruel" father finds out about their love, he separated them by sending the boy to sea. A similar theme with a different ending is found in the Drowsy Sleeper" broadsides.
2) Several months after he rambling boy is send to sea on a man-of-war, there's a battle and he dies by a cannonball. That very night his bloody ghost visits the father.
3) A fortnight later she hangs herself with a rope. Her father finds her hanging in her room. In the ballad-- "He took a knife and cut her down/And in her bosom a note was found." The note, written in blood, blames the "cruel father" for her "sad overthrow."
4) The ending of "Cruel Father," is the standard: "Dig me a grave, both wide and deep/ Place a marble-stone for to cover it/ And in the middle a turtle dove/To show young virgins I dy'd for love!" Both the suicide and ending show The Cruel Father's association with Butcher Boy (see Cox: Folk-Songs of the South).
Notice that in Cruel Father there is no false lover, no pregnancy is mentioned and that she does not hang herself because of her false lover but because her cruel father separated them and sent her lover to sea where he was killed by a cannonball. Cruel Father therefore, is a different ballad with enough in common to be a variant of this family of ballads. Two North American variants tell some of the story but most are badly corrupted and mention the father's use of a cannonball.
R. Matteson 2016]
"The Cruel Father or Deceived Maid"- from the Madden Collection, c.1790.
A squire’s daughter near Aclecloy,
She fell in love with a 'prentice boy,
Buy when her father came to hear,
He separated her from her dear.
[Now all for to increase her pain.
He lent her true love to the main;]
To act his part with a gallant tar,
On board the Terrible man of war.
He had not been three months at sea,
Before he fell in a bloody fray;
It was tins young man's lot to fall.
And he lost his life by a cannon-ball.
That very night this man was slain,
His Ghost unto her father came,
With dismal moans by the bed he stood,
His neck and breast all smear'd with blood.
A fortnight after this lady fair
She fell in fits for her only dear
That very night on her bed awoke,
And hung herself in her own bed-rope.
He took a knife and cut her down
And in her bosom a note was found.
It was wrote in blood by a woman's hand,
These few lines as you shall understand.
A cruel father you was [worst] of men,
'Tis you have brought me to my sad end,
You sent my jewel where the stormy winds did blow,
Now, alas! it has prov'd my overthrow.
Once my dear love is slain
And bury'd in the watery main,
May this warning be, for your cruelty,
I will die a maid for my jewel's sake.
Dig me a grave, both wide and deep;
Place a marble-stone for to cover it,
And in the middle a turtle dove,
To show young virgins I dy'd for love!"