Butcher and the Tailor's Wife, The

DESCRIPTION: A tailor lives in London with his wife Mary Bell. She buys a joint from the butcher, and he asks a nightvisit as the price. She tells her husband to lay in wait. The butcher overcomes him. The tailor begs the butcher to spare him and take his wife.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1845 (Bodleian broadside)
KEYWORDS: bawdy husband wife fight trick adultery
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Palmer-FolkSongsCollectedBy-Ralph-VaughanWilliams, #7, "The Lousy Tailor" (1 tune; the text was not taken down by Vaughan Williams but is supplied by Palmer from a broadside)
ADDITIONAL: Leslie Shepard, _The Broadside Ballad_, Legacy Books, 1962, 1978, p. 150, "Three Maids A-Milking Would Go" (reproduction of a broadside page with "Three Maidens to Milking Did Go" and "The Butcher and the Tailor's Wife")
Roud #1528
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Firth b.34(296)=Harding B 11(3815)=Johnson Ballads 1964, "The Butcher and the Tailor", Williamson (Newcastle), c. 1845
NOTES [23 words]: The Shepard and Bodleian broadsides are the same. The whole song, of course, is yet another riff on the proverbial feebleness of tailors. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.2
File: BdBuTaWi

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