The Butcher Boy

This week's song is from Rosie Upton who came to her first session a couple of weeks ago::

"I've always loved ballads, hearing the story unfold often in a horrific almost cinematic form, this is especially so in murder ballads. I've wondered what the truth might be behind these stories. Asking myself whether the story is based on a myth or legend carried down over the centuries or based on more recent historical fact. Are they the oral tradition's equivalent of a crime or historical novel that is simply 'a good read' or merely a cautionary tale? It has always fascinated and appalled me that women come off particularly badly in ballads, nearly always the victim in a man's world, but regrettably that has been the reality for the greater part of history. Something feminism sought to redress and I am saddened that many young people today have disregarded and misunderstood the intention of the women's movement. I think that is why ballads, and more especially murder ballads, strike such a chord with me. Even from an early age I loved telling stories, as a teenager I enjoyed reading the Nordic sagas and I loved the theatricality of the ballad tradition long before I became a singer.

I already sang two similar songs within the same group of ballads - The Oxford Girl and Joseph Taylor's Worcester City - when I first heard the late Isabel Sutherland sing The Butcher Boy at a Sidmouth Festival back in the 1970s. The power of the song really hit me and the way she sang it really brought the story to life - so with some trepidation I asked her if she would mind if I sang it and she agreed. I've been singing it for more than 30 years and I still find it chilling. It is a powerful song which tells everything about the abusive power that a man can wield over a woman. As with most ballads it doesn't actually say why he killed her, she like so many in similar situations, has no voice. It is left for the listener to imagine. Did he rape her, was she pregnant, was it revenge, or was he simply a psychopath? We don't know but it ends with some redemption and retribution with the murderer hanged. Personally, I would have preferred him to be imprisoned in solitary confinement for the remainder of his miserable life. There is little justice for the murdered woman of whom we learn so little. The story has been copied so many times in detective fiction from Agatha Christie's crime novels to Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse and the dozens of television series they have spawned. Why do we relish such appalling stories.......? I really don't know the answer."

Rosie

My parents gave me learning, good learning they gave to me
For they sent me to a butcher's shop a butcher boy to be

It's there I met sweet Mary Ann with the dark and the rovin' eye
And I promised I would marry her in the month of sweet July

I went down to her mother's house 'tween the hours of eight and nine
And I asked her for to walk with him down by the foaming brine

Down by the foaming brine we'll go, down by the foaming brine
Now that won't be a pleasant walk, down by the foaming brine

We walked it east and we walked west and we walked it all alone
Till he took a knife from out me breast and he stabbed her to the ground

She fell down on her bended knee and for mercy she did cry
"Oh Willie dear, don't murder me, I'm not prepared to die"

I took her by her lily-white hands and I dragged her to the brim
And with a mighty downward push I pushed her fair body in

I went back to his mother's house 'tween the hours of twelve and one
And little, little did she think what her own poor son had done

I asked her for a handkerchief to tie around my hair
And I asked her for some candlelight to to light me up the stairs

No rest, no rest did the young man get, no rest he could not find
For he thought he saw the gates of hell approaching his bedside

And that murder it was soon found out and the gallows were his doom
For the murdering of sweet Mary Ann who lies where the roses bloom

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