RAILROAD BOY

(trad.)

JOAN BAEZ & BOB DYLAN, 1975 (Ken Regan)

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A variant of "Go Bring Me Back My Blue-Eyed Boy," "London City" and "The Butcher's Boy."

Likely source: Buell Kazee, Brunswick 213A (032), 1928; reissued as track No. 6 on Harry Smith's compilation "Anthology of American Folk Music" (3 vols., 6 LP) (FA 2951/2952/2953, 1952).

• DOWNLOAD AND LISTEN to Dylan's performance (Real Audio, 687 KB),
  "Minnesota Party Tape," May 1961.

Lyrics as performed by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez,
Hughes Stadium, Colorado University, Fort Collins, CO, May 23, 1976,
transcribed by Manfred Helfert.

She went upstairs to make her bed
And not one word to her mother said.
Her mother she went upstairs too
Saying, "Daughter, oh daughter, what's troublin' you?"

"Oh mother, oh mother, I cannot tell
That railroad boy that I love so well.
He courted me my life away
And now at home will no longer stay."

"There is a place in yonder town
Where my love goes and he sits him down.
And he takes that strange girl on his knee
And he tells to her what he won't tell me."

Her father he came home from work
Sayin', "Where is my daughter, she seems so hurt"
He went upstairs to give her hope
An' he found her hangin' by a rope.

He took his knife and he cut her down
And on her bosom these words he found:
"Go dig my grave both wide and deep,
Put a marble stone at my head and feet,
And on my breast, put a snow white dove
To warn the world that I died of love."