Hi,

7F. My Blue-Eyed Boy is finished for now, here's a link to the main headnotes: http://www.bluegrassmessengers.com/7f-my-blue-eyed-boy-.aspx

I found 3 more US versions and have nearly all the extant printed versions. There are about 30 full versions. I'm including some of the headnotes here:

[This song, known by a variety of titles, is characterized by its Chorus which begins, "Oh, bring me back my blue-eyed boy" or in the UK "Bring me back the one I love." It is related to the "Died for Love" songs through floating stanzas which will be covered in detail later. Its theme is-- the abandoned maid hoping for the return of her false lover who has left her-- is similar to the theme of the Died for Love songs. The "Bring me back" songs are characterized by a variety of floating stanzas including "I wish" stanzas and the "Must I Go Bound" stanza also found similarly in The Unfortunate Swain, c. 1750. The "I wish" stanzas are different that the "I wish, I wish" stanzas in Died for Love. In the US the "Adieu, adieu," stanza[1], which is found as part of the chorus of "There is a Tavern," is sometimes present as well as "Who will shoe" stanzas found at the the end of Child 76, Lass of Roch Royal. The "Never change the old one for the new" stanza and the suicide stanza are found similarly in "Maiden's Prayer," a version of Died for Love popularized during World War I and II which is still popular today in the UK. The suicide stanza found in US versions of Blue Eyed Boy was derived from the popular Butcher Boy. Since in one main UK variant her love is but a "sailor boy," there is a connection with 7A. "The Sailor Boy/Sweet William" and possibly also with 7Aa. "Sailor on the Deep Blue Sea (Deep Blue Sea)." Arthur Tanner and Riley Puckett's 1929 recording "Bring Back My Blue Eyed Boy" has two stanzas of 7A. "The Sailor Boy/Sweet William." The obvious conclusion is that the Blue Eyed Boy is a sailor boy who has left her and she awaits his return.

The eleven Died for Love ballads and the twenty-six related appendices are characterized by floating stanzas built around a common theme-- a maid has been rejected and/or abandoned by her false lover. In "Blue-eyed boy" her lover has left her, she suspects he's been false and she hopes he will come back or be brought back and then she will happy be! Unfortunately for the maid, she's more likely to die for love, than have her lover brought back.

In Belden's headnotes to The Blue-Eyed Boy in "Ballads and Songs," 1940, he astutely writes, " Here divers images or motifs seem to have been gathered around a refrain stanza which gives the name to the song. " What he doesn't do is describe how the divers images are related. Since the "Must I go bound" stanza originated in the 1600s Belden dates it but doesn't date the song. Seventy years later Robert B. Waltz of The Traditional Ballad Index writes as the opening to the notes of Blue-Eyed Boy, " This is so close to 'The Butcher Boy' that I almost listed them as one song." Fortunately Waltz (and all) did separate them because obviously the two songs are quite different. Yes, a few versions here and abroad segue into Butcher Boy, but those are exceptions not the rule. What was not pointed out by either Belden or Waltz is the relatedness of the "Bring me back" songs and that these songs composed of different floating stanzas have originated from a common ancestor. Several different, yet related, branches have emerged which are grouped together here under my arbitrary "Blue-Eyed Boy" heading:

1) British: "The Sailor Boy." ("My love is but a sailor boy")
2) American: "My Blue-eyed Boy" ("Oh, bring me back my blue-eyed boy")
3) British: "Willow Tree" ("As I passed by a willow tree")

Whether found in North America along the Appalachians, in Ontario, the Mid-west or England and Scotland, its chorus is nearly the same-- suggesting a UK origin from a yet unknown broadside antecedent source that was brought to America and has been adapted. The American versions have "blue-eyed boy" in the chorus, while those found in UK do not. The chorus, although not always present, appears in the US as:

Oh, bring me back my blue-eyed boy,
Oh, bring my darling back to me,
Oh, bring me back the one I love
And happy will I ever be[2].

   The standard chorus in the UK appears:

Then give me back that one I love,
O! give, O! give him back to me;
If I only had that one I love,
How happy, happy should I be[3].

Obviously the Chorus does not suggest great antiquity and the unknown UK antecedent is probably no older than the early 1800s. In her 1915 article, Songs and Ballads of the Southern Mountains[4], Olive Dame Campbell said:

When I first began my collecting, seven years ago, this variety of material greatly puzzled me, but gradually I came to differentiate sections, singers, and songs. I found that the more accessible mountain sections rarely furnish good ballad material. Such semi-modern songs as My Blue-eyed Boy, and I Once Did Love with Fond Affection, are more or less commonly sung; but where books are easily obtained and life begins to become complex, the older ballads rapidly disappear.

Campbell did not suggest that the semi-modern song, My Blue-Eyed Boy, was of British origin and dated back one hundred years. Still, she is right that it's not one of the older ballads. Instead, Blue-Eyed Boy is a love song constructed by floating stanzas of mostly British origin with the British "Bring me back" chorus. The Romany gypsies, however, knew the song many, many years before Campbell's 1915 assessment of Blue-Eyed Boy in the Appalachians.

In his article Christmas Eve and After In (Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society- July, 1909) Thomas William Thompson commented: " There are a large number of variants of this song, which was a favourite with the old Gypsies. It is still remembered by the Gypsies of the Eastern Counties as well as by those of the North Country. "

These older British Romany gypsies include Thompson's informant Shandres Petulengro (b. 1862) and his contemporary Xavier Petulengro (b. 1859) a horse trader, violinist, fortune teller and writer. Jasper Petulengro who was two generations older is closer to the old gypsies that Thompson mentioned. Also known as Ambrose Smith[5], Jasper was a gypsy who George Borrow (b. 1803) befriended when they were young and became the leading subject of Borrow's book's "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye." It's easy to imagine the "Willow Tree," a gypsy title of Blue Eyed Boy, being sung around the Romany campfires late at night during the early 1800s-- a date much older that the extant versions indicate.
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Richie