The Butcher Boy ♥ ♫♪ ♥

Performed by the Ludlow’s Ballad Group. Clip from July ’65. The Ludlow’s were made up of (in this case) Paddy Roche, Margaret O’Brien & Seán Loughran. This tragic and beautiful ballad is a variant of the widely known “Gosport Tragedy“. It has become very popular throughout Ireland, where everyone seems to have a soft spot for a nice sad love song. ♥ ♫♪ “In Moore street where I did dwell A butcher boy I loved right well He courted me my life away But now with me he will not stay I wish, I wish, I wish in vain I wish I was a maid again A maid again I ne’er will be ’Til cherries grow on an ivy tree I wish my baby it was born And smiling on it’s daddy’s knee And me, poor girl, to be dead and gone With the long green grass growing over me She went upstairs to go to bed And calling to her mother, said: “Give me a chair till I sit down And a pen and ink till I write down“ At every word she dropped a tear At every line cried: “Willie dear Oh, what a foolish girl was I To be led astray by a butcher boy“ He went upstairs and the door he broke He found her hanging from a rope He took his knife and he cut her down And in her pocket these words he found: “Oh, make my grave large, wide and deep Put a marble stone at my head and feet And in the middle, a turtledove That the world may know that I died for love.“