The Butcher Boy

In London City, where I did dwell,
A butcher boy I loved so well,
He courted me my heart away,
And now with me he will not stay.
There is an inn in the same town,
Where my love goes and sits him down
He takes a strange girl on his knee
And tells to her what he didn't tell me.

It's a grief to me; I'll tell you why,
Because she has more gold than I,
But her gold will melt and her silver fly;
In time of need she'll be poor as I
I wish my baby it was born
And smiling on its daddy's knee
And me poor girl to be dead and gone
With the long green grass growing over me.

'Oh, mother, mother, you do not know,
What grief and pain and sorrow and woe -
Go get a chair to sit me down
And a pen and ink to write it down.'
On every line she dropped a tear,
While calling home her Willy dear,
And when her father he came home
He said, 'Where is my daughter gone?'

He went upstairs, the door he broke -
He found her hanging upon a rope -
He took his knife and he cut her down,
And in her breast these lines were found;
'Oh what a silly maid am I!
To hang myself for a butcher boy!
Go dig my grave, both long and deep,
Place a marble stone at my head and feet,
And on my breast a turtle dove
To show the world I died for love.'