The Butcher Boy by Donald M. Winkelman, 1962
The Butcher Boy
by Donald M. Winkelman
From: Western Folklore, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Jul., 1962), pp. 186-187
Published by: Western States Folklore Society
[Not proofed. This article has one version and one stanza from another (footnote 3). No new information or conclusions,
R. Matteson 2017]
"The Butcher Boy"- A textual analysis of the collected versions and variants of "The Butcher Boy" reveals the love triangle situation that is related with a great deal of leaping and relatively little lingering.' The plot in every text with which I have come in contact is basically the same:
1. Statement of situation: a girl, usually living in Jersey City, loves a butcher boy who first courts, then rejects her.
2. The butcher boy finds another girl, sometimes at an inn or house, to whom he tells things "... that he wouldn't tell me."
3. In some versions the taking of a new lover is blamed upon money; in others the reason is not given.
4. A number of texts contain a stanza or two about the questioning mother, and the young lady's desire to write down what has happened."
5. Father returns, searches for his daughter, breaks down her door, and finds her "hanging by a rope."
6. He cuts her down and finds a message asking to be buried in a grave (both wide and deep) with a marble stone and a turtle dove as love symbols.
Of course this is only a brief outline, and there are certain expansions in individual variants.
A text I collected from Mr. Edwin Mays in Columbus, Ohio (he learned the song in Irish Creek, Virginia), provides an unexpected ending motif.
1. In Jersey City I once did dwell,
A butcher boy I loved so well;
He courted me my life away,
And then with me he would not stay.
2. There's a strange girl in that same town,
Where my love go and sit down;
He take this girl upon his knees,
And tell her things that he wouldn't tell me.
3. When night came on her father came home,
Said, "I wonder where my daughter has gone."
He went upstairs and the door he broke,
And he found her hanging by a rope.
4. He took his knife and cut her down,
And in her bosom these words were found:
"What a silly girl say I know,
To kill myself for the butcher boy.
5. "Go dig my grave so wide and deep,
Place a tombstone at my head and feet;
And on my breast put a snow-white dove,
To show the world that I died for love."
6. They buried her there in the old church yard,
And he was buried by her;
And out of her grave grew a blood-red rose,
And out of his grew a brio. [briar]
7. They grew as tall as the old church tower,
And then wouldn't grow any higher;
They tied theirself in a double bow-knot,
And both of them died together.
One's first tendency is to say that the rose and briar motif has been tacked
on. However, how can this be validly demonstrated?
The most casual analysis shows that except for minor variations, the first
five stanzas are iambic tetrameter with rhyming couplets, AABB. Yet stanzas
six and seven have alternating four and three beats, i.e., tetrameter, trimeter,
tetrameter, trimeter, and have a rhyme scheme of ABCB. This change in it-
self demonstrates the addition of foreign material to the original body of the
song. Moreover, the same impression would be gained by listening to the
ballad as it is sung. The second and fourth lines just do not fit the melodic
line as it has been established. Since in the passage of time rough spots would
have a tendency to be reworked and smoothed over,' it seems to me that this
is a relatively recent addition."
One of the points of greatest interest is the folk process. How do motifs
become attached to ballads? What is the process by which they become in-
tegral parts of the song? This analysis, though brief, is one means of deter-
mining the changes that occur. The transitional text may provide a partial
answer to this difficult and serious question.
There are undoubtedly variants of "The Butcher Boy" which have not
come to my attention. I would be most interested in receiving additional
texts, preferably with the music notated or on tape.
DONALD M. WINKELMAN
Indiana University, Bloomington
Footnotes:
1 For this analysis I have used, along with variants I have collected, versions from H. M. Belden, John H. Cox, Mary O. Eddy, and Albert B. Friedman.
2 Belden, Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society (Columbia, Mo., 1940), p. 204; Cox, Folk-Songs of the South (Cambridge, Mass., 1925), p. 430; Eddy, Ballads and Songs from Ohio (New York, 1939), p. 129.
3 Belden, p. 205, gives a text from Lafayette County, Mo., that contains the apron as a symbol of pregnancy. An unpublished Ohio variant that I collected from Mrs. Bobbie Catron in Columbus, Ohio, contains a stanza which is common to other ballads and stories:
Must I be bound while he go free?
Must I love a boy that don't love me?
Alasl Alack! Can never be
Till oranges grow on apple trees.