The Butcher’s Boy is a British folk song, likely an amalgam of several Broadside ballads. It is also found in American versions. It is a song telling of a girl who hanged herself because her lover abandoned her after getting her pregnant. The girl left a note that her father found, asking for a grave with a dove placed on it, “so the world many know, I died of love”.

Lyrics

Note some versions sing "till cherries grow on an apple tree." The location of the song also varies in certain versions; some set the song in More Street, or London City.

Notable versions

Joan Baez

Joan Baez

Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....

 as "Railroad Boy" on Joan Baez, Vol. 2

Joan Baez, Vol. 2

Joan Baez, Vol. 2 was Baez's second album. Released in 1961, the album, like her self-titled 1960 debut album, featured mostly traditional songs. The bluegrass band The Greenbriar Boys provided backup on two songs. Joan Baez, Vol...

, 1961; Sinéad O'Connor

Sinéad O'Connor

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor is an Irish singer-songwriter. She rose to fame in the late 1980s with her debut album The Lion and the Cobra and achieved worldwide success in 1990 with a cover of the song "Nothing Compares 2 U"....

; Ludlow's Ballad Group with
Maureen Hagerty; Kirsty Maccoll

Kirsty MacColl

Kirsty Anna MacColl was an English singer-songwriter.MacColl scored several pop hits from the early 1980s to the early 1990s...

The song appeared in the popular sitcom Upstairs Downstairs, in the episode I Dies from Love

I Dies from Love

I Dies from Love was the seventh episode of the first series of the British television series, Upstairs, Downstairs. The episode is set in the summer of 1907.-Cast:Guest cast*Aimée Delamain *Yolande Turner...

. The Irish kitchen maid, Emily, hangs herself after her lover refuses to be with her.
Contemporary Scottish folk band Lau record a version on the album 'Lightweights and Gentlemen'.

Eva Cassidy

Eva Cassidy

Eva Marie Cassidy was an American vocalist known for her interpretations of jazz, blues, folk, gospel, country and pop classics. In 1992 she released her first album, The Other Side, a set of duets with go-go musician Chuck Brown, followed by a live solo album, Live at Blues Alley in 1996...

 and Kate Rusby

Kate Rusby

Kate Anna Rusby is an English folk singer and songwriter from Penistone, South Yorkshire. Sometimes known as The Barnsley Nightingale, she has headlined various British national folk festivals, and is regarded as one of the most famous English folk singers of contemporary times...

 have performed variants entitled, A Bold Young Farmer.
Magpie Lane

Magpie Lane

Magpie Lane is an English folk group, based in Oxford, England.The musicians of Magpie Lane first came together in the winter of 1992–93 to record The Oxford Ramble, a collection of songs and tunes from, or about, Oxfordshire. Although originally conceived as a one-off recording project, the band...

has recorded a variant entitled Sheffield Park.