Jeni Hankins & Billy Kemp: Listen & Lyrics

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I created this story after spending a few years with different versions of “The Butcher Boy,” also known as “The Railroad Boy” or “Snow Dove.” The traditional song tells the story of a girl whose lover has courted her and then spurned her. She returns home and her father finds her hanging from a rope with her burial request in her pocket. My song, though not identical in particulars to the old song, tells this story from the girl’s perspective and recreates her thoughts as she contemplates suicide. The specter of the hoot owl comes from a night when I heard the traditional ballad “I Wish My Baby Was Born” sung unaccompanied by Old Time musician Riley Baugus.

Oh, Jesus, this is Janey,
a-calling to you now.
I need for you to hear me,
so I’m praying right out loud.

Mama’s ten years dead
and Daddy’s got so poor.
I’m the only one to tend him
since brother’s killed at war.

The blackest of all sinners,
I stand before you plain,
shamed by the miller’s boy
who I’ll not see again.

He promised me we’d marry,
but a soldier, now, is he
and I but one poor Christian girl,
disgraceful though I be.

Oh, Jesus, there’s a hoot owl.
At night he cries my name
and tempts me to the rafters
where I should hang for shame.

If this bird be a devil
then I’m a devil’s maid
and false to your own precious blood
by which my sin was paid.

If this bird be an angel
then he’s Lucifer himself,
a fallen angel come to carry
fallen me to hell.

Oh, Jesus move my hand
from round this length of rope,
unbind the slippery knot
that tightens round my throat.

Though I should swing like Judas
from the crimson gallows tree,
Oh, Jesus, ain’t there hope
for a broken girl like me.

Sweet Jesus make that bird
into the whitest dove
and make his cry into the song
of your redeeming love.

Sweet Jesus make his cry
into a young girl’s prayer
that she may live another day
beyond the Devil’s snares.

Oh, Jesus, this is Janey,
a-calling to you now.
I need for you to hear me,
so I’m praying right out loud.