The Butcher's Boy

Book cover image from Wikimedia

Recently listening to Folk Alley radio has brought many memories of songs we used to sing in the late sixties, a heyday of folk music.

Many of these were doleful old ballads with many versions. According to the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, this was an old folk song from England. In the version they sing here, it begins with the setting "In London City."

Here Kirsty MacColl has it as "In More Street, where I did dwell."

Ryan's Fancy has a Dublin version, and in Newfoundland the song records the tragedy as happening in Jersey city.

In 2012 Jessie Ferguson concurs with the Dublin location.

The Butcher Boy is also a crime novel series by Thomas Perry, later made into a tragicomic movie.