In Jersey City- Bessie Martin (MI) 1930 Gardner A
[From: Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan, by Chickering and Emelyon Elizabeth Gardner, 1939. Their notes follow. Date is circa 1915.
R. Matteson 2017]
37 THE BUTCHER BOY
For a version of this Americanized British ballad almost identical with Michigan A and a note pointing out its composite character see Cox, pp. 430-432. See also Allsopp, II, 207; Eddy, No. 36; Flanders and Brown, pp. 115-116; Henry, JAFL, XLV, 72-74; Scarborough, pp. 282-288, Sharp, II, 76-78; and Stout, pp. 37-41.
A. [In Jersey City.] Version A was obtained in 1930 from Miss Bessie Martin, Sebewaing, who had learned the song from having heard it sung at country gatherings in the "Thumb District" from the time that she began attending such gatherings fifteen years earlier.
In Jersey City where I did dwell
A soldier boy I loved so well;
He courted me my heart away,
And now with me he will not stay.
He has a girl in that same town;
That's where he goes and sits him down.
He takes that strange girl on his knee
And tells her things he once told me.
'Twas when I wore my aprons low,
He'd follow me wherever I'd go.
And now I wear them to my shins,
He passes the door and never looks in.
I went upstairs to make my bed,
And not a word to my mother said.
My mother came upstairs to me
And said, "What can the matter be?"
7. "Go get me a chair to sit upon,
And pen and paper to write it on."
In the letter she wrote to Willie dear
On every line she dropped a tear.
6. But Willie dear he would not come;
He gave his love to another one.
And when at night her father came home,
He asked his wife where his daughter had gone.
7 Upstairs he went, the door he broke,
And there he found her hanging on a rope.
He took his knife and cut her down,
And upon her breast these words were found:
8 "What a foolish, foolish girl was I
To hang myself for a soldier boy.
I've wished, I've wished, I've wished in vain
That I could once be born again.
9 "But that can never, never be,
For an orange can't grow on an apple tree.
Go dig my grave both wide and deep;
Put a marble stone at my head and feet.
10 "Upon my finger a diamond ring
To show the world I died for him.
Upon my breast a turtle dove
To show the world I died for love."