Died for Love- Mrs. Gray (IN) c. 1875 Henry F
[My title. Single stanza from Mellinger Henry, Folk-Songs from the Southern Highlands (New York: J. J. Augustin, 1938). His notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
57 THE BUTCHER BOY
While versions, C, D, E, and F of this song were not from the Southern Highlands, they were recalled by the reading of versions A and B, and are included for the sake of comparison. See W. Roy Mackenzie's "The Quest of the Ballad," p. 9; Cox, No. 145; Pound, No. 24; Lomax, p. 397; Sandburg, p. 3 24 (title is "London City"); Spaeth, "Weep Some More, My Lady," p. 128 (title is "In Jersey City"); Journal, XXIX, 169; XXXI, 73; XXXV, 360; XXXIX, 122; Phillips Barry, Ancient British Ballads, etc. (A privately printed list), No. 41; Arthur Palmer Hudson's "Specimens of Mississippi Folk-Lore," p. 31; Bradley Kincaid's My Favorite Mountain Ballads and Old-Time Songs, Chicago, 1928, p. 43 ; Flanders and Brown, p. 15.
F. [Died for Love] This fragment was obtained from Mrs. Henry C. Gray, R. F. D., No. 3, Box 499, Terre Haute, Indiana, who has written as follows: "There is a woman living with mother who has been with our family more than sixty years. She is seventy-six now. Her parents were real pioneers north of here..... She remembered as a child hearing a young man sing The Butcher Boy.....She was never a singer and could not remember how it went but the last stanza was what struck her attention." Here it is with only slight variation from the last stanza in A and B.
Go, dig my grave both wide and deep;
Put a marble stone at my head and feet;
And on my grave put a turtle dove
To show the world that I died for love