Jersey City is referenced in one version of an old folk song called “The Butcher Boy,” and the reasons for that are as much of a hodgepodge as the city itself.
Hodgepodges are apparently the nature of folk songs, with this particular song of unrequited love rooting back to ballads from countries in the United Kingdom.
“In Jersey 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 …” begins one variation.
It then describes a tale of woe as sung from the perspective of a young woman in love with this butcher boy. She finds that he’s going to an inn and courting another young woman she can’t compete with, because that young woman has money and she doesn’t.
Her parents try to comfort her to no avail. She takes her own life for love.
One can interpret the song poking fun at the idea of this kind of devotional love as much “Romeo and Juliet” does; in other ways it seems to be critiquing a class system in which someone poor can fall in love with someone else poor who courted them, only to be dropped at the first sign of gold elsewhere.
Variations of this song include “Railroad Boy,” a cover based on a rendition by Buell Kazee that was performed by Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in 1976 and recorded in a solo version by Baez.
The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection at Missouri State University (MSU) features recording of “The Butcher Boy” – two with “Jersey City” references, one by Gladys McChristain sung in Huntsville, Arkansas on Oct. 1958 and the other by Bill Ping in Santa Rosa, Calif, in 1972 – among the 1,000-plus Ozark Mountain folk songs recorded between 1956 and 1976 by traveling salesman Max Hunter.
Dr. Michael Murray is a professor of music at MSU who led the project that digitized these songs.
Although noting that he’s not a folklorist, Murray offered his thoughts on the Jersey City in an email:
“Although ‘The Butcher Boy’ as it appears in the Hunter Collection is probably American, it is clearly derived from several old Scots-Irish ballads. These songs traveled first to Appalachia and then to the Ozarks, picking up many variants and mutations along the way. Some of the common versions refer to ‘London town’ or ‘London City’ rather than Jersey City.
“My best guess is that it is a mistaken reference to the British Jersey and not your Jersey City. I realize that there is no “Jersey City” in (old) Jersey. But I have come across some interesting corruptions of the original references.”
One of those, Murray said, is a reference to the queen of Arkansas.
So this song’s particular reference may be the old world mixing with the new -- old Jersey and New Jersey, bridged by follies of the heart and a lack of upward mobility.
Listen to the aforementioned versions at https://maxhunter.missouristate.edu/.