> Folk Music > Songs > The Blue-Haired Boy

The Blue-Haired Boy / Blue-Haired Jimmy / The Death of Willie

[ Roud 1411 ; Ballad Index RcBlHaJi ; Mudcat 6044 , 33707 ; trad.]

Two recordings of George ‘Pop’ Maynard of Copthorne, Sussex, singing The Blue-Haired Boy to Brian Matthews in 1959 were included in 2000 on Maynard’s Musical Traditions anthology Down the Cherry Tree. Both this song and Horton Baker of Chilhowee, Virginia, singing Blue-Haired Jimmy in an early 1960s recording were included in 2020 on the Musical Traditions Old World/New World anthology Wait Till the Clouds Roll By. Mike Yates and Rod Stradling noted:

o be frank, at the moment we are unaware as to the origin of this song. Most experts seem to agree that it probably comes from America, even though the earliest known sighting, on an English broadside from the 1890s, is in Britain. At least one American Old-Timey group, The Cumberland Mountain Fret Pickers, recorded the song in 1929 as Little Blue-Haird (sic) Boy for Brunswick/Vocalion, though this record was unissued. Luckily a test-pressing survives. Sadly the personnel of The Cumberland Mountain Fret Pickers remain a mystery. In 1932 the song appeared on Gene Autry’s Sensational Collection of Famous Original Cowboy Songs and Mountain Ballads. Whatever its origin, it has only been reported on a few occasions, chiefly in Britain and America, and occasionally in Ireland.

Roy Harris sang Blue Haired Jimmy live in 1997 at The White Lion folk club in Wherwell, Hampshire. This recording was included in 1999 on his WildGoose albu, Live at The Lion.

Emma Vickers from Burscough, Lancashire, sang My Sailor Love to Fred Hamer in August 1969. This is a composite of I’d Like to Tell to You (Roud 9553) and The Blue-Haired Boy. This recording was included in 1989 on the VWML cassette of Fred Hamer’s field recordings, The Leaves of Life.

Jon Boden sang Emma Vickers’ I’d Like to Tell to You as the 29 December 2010 entry of Jon’s project A Folk Song a Day. He commented in the blog:

Given to me on cassette [The Leaves of Life] by Malcolm Taylor from the Vaughan Williams Library. We started doing it with the Ratcatchers but never recorded it. A fairly amazing bit of traddy surrealism.

Lyrics

Pop Maynard sings The Blue-Haired Boy

He’s gone and left us all has our blue-haired boy
We shall never see our cross-eyed pet again
Like a dream he passed away on the 93rd of May
He never died so suddenly before

No more with pussy cat will he play upon the mat
No more between his teeth he’ll squeeze his tail
For I’m going into the brickfields to fulfil his last request
And to plant a bunch of turnips on his grave

Chorus:
Then he’s gone forevermore at the age of 94
There’s nothing in this world his life could save
And I’m going into the brickfields to fulfil his last request
And to plant a bunch of turnips on his grave

We bathed his head in a boiling pot of lead
And then we gently laid him down to rest
Through the night the burglars came and they broke into his room
And stole a mustard plaster off his chest

We filled his mouth with glue and we tried to bring him to
‘Til at last all efforts were in vain
And after all we tried, then he sneezed and smiled and died
And blew his nose and sneezed and died again

Horton Baker sings Blue-Haired Jimmy

He’s gone for evermore is our darling blue-haired boy,
We’ll never see our cross-eyed darling any more.
Like a dream he passed away on the 39th of May;
He never died so suddenly before.

No more upon the mat will he play with pussycat,
No more between his teeth he’ll squeeze her tail.
No more he’ll rub her nose against the red-hot iron stove,
For little brother Jimmy’s kicked the pail.

We knew he was departing by the colour of his breath;
We saw his eyebrows dropping in the mud.
The doctor said the only thing that saved the boy from death
Was to stop the circulation of his blood.

We gently bathed his head in a pot of boiling lead,
And then we gently laid him down to rest;
But through the night a burglar came and broke into the room,
And swiped the mustard plaster from his chest.

We filled his mouth with glue to try to bring him to,
Alas, though, all our efforts were in vain;
And last of all we tried—but he sneezed and smiled and died,
He blew his nose and smiled and died again.

He’s gone forevermore at the age of 94,
There’s nothing in this world his life could save.
I’m going to the barbershop to fill his last request,
To plant a bunch of whiskers on his grave.

Jon Boden sings I’d Like to Tell to You

I’d like to tell to you
About my love so true,
He was chief engineer
On the White Star line,
The one with the backyard view.

His beauty was all he had,
He’d a mouth just like a crab
And an India-rubber lip
Like the rudder of a ship
And I tell you he’s gone mad!

I’ll never forget the day
His spirit passed away.
it was early about ten o’clock at night
When the birds were sweetly singing
And the ducks were making hay
And the sun and moon where shining both at night.

We filled his mouth with glue
To try to bring him to
But found that all our efforts were in vain.
For he just sat up and smiled
And then laid down and died
And he blowed his nose and smiled and died again.

He’s gone forevermore
At the age of ninety-four,
I’ll never see my cross-eyed boy again.
I’ll go down to some graveyard
To fulfil his last request
And plant a blood-red rose upon his grave.