London City- Edith Walker (NC) 1939 Brown 4K
[From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore, Volume 4, 1956. Their notes from Vol. 2 follow. Walker learned her ballads from several informant including Nora Hicks.
July 8, 1942
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.
4K. 'London City.' Sung by Edith Walker. Recorded, but no date or place given. Other titles given are 'Farmer's Boy' and 'Butcher Boy.' The initial measures are only slightly related to those of 81 N, which follows[1]. No source given.
1. In London City where I did dwell,
There lived a boy I loved so well,
He courted me, my heart away,
And then with me he would not stay.
2 And in that same city there lived a girl
Whose house he'd go and sit around,
He took her down upon his knee
And tell her things he wouldn't tell me.
3. It's the reason why, I'll tell you [why]
She had more gold, more gold than than I,
Her gold will melt and she'll be sad
She'll see to the day she's poor as I.
4. One evening late my father came in,
Inquiring where his daughter had been,
He ran upstairs and broke the door,
Ad there she hung by the bed[2] floor
5. He drew his knife and cut her down
and in her bosom her letter was found:
Oh dig my grave both wide and deep
Place marble stones at my head and feet.
And by my side place a willow tree,
To show to world [to] inquire for me,
And in that tree place a turtle dove
To show the world I died for love.
1. Scale: Mode III, plagal. Tonal Center: f. Structure: abab1 (2,2,2,2) = aa1 (4,4).
2. text here is corrupt; could be "bed [rope, to the] floor."