A Rich Irish Lady- Wine (WV) 1916 Cox D
[From John Harrington Cox; Folk Songs of the South; 1925- his notes follow. Cox did not include these versions under the Child Ballads. This ballad is not to be confused with the popular ballad, Child No. 73 Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, which is commonly known in the US, and Canada as "The Brown Girl."
US and Canada versions are based on the hundreds of late 18th century English broadsides sometimes titled "The Sailor from Dover" or "Sally and her Truelove Billy."
Child's B version of 295, "The Brown, Brown Girl" collected by Rev. S. Baring-Gould, introduced stanzas from the "Sally and her Truelove Billy" songs. In his article "Folk Song Tradition, Revival and Re-Creation" Steve Gardham has shown that Baring-Gould's ballad is a re-creation of two ballads and not traditional.
To put it simply, the versions are not related to "The Brown Girl" but are part of the "The Sailor from Dover" and "Sally and her Truelove Billy" song group. In the US and Canada some common titles are "Pretty Sally," "Sally," and "A Rich Irish Lady." They have been put here following Bronson and others who have attached them to Child 295, not because they belong here.
R. Matteson 2014]
114. PRETTY SALLY
This is the English song usually known as "Sally and her True-love Billy" or "Sally and Billy"; also as "The Bold Sailor" and "The (Young) Sailor from Dover" (see Journal, xxix, 178, note 1; add De Vaynes, The Kentish Garland, No. 153, 11, 678). For other American texts see Barry, Journal, xxvii, 73 (Kansas; reported from Iowa); Campbell and Sharp, No. 36 (North Carolina,
Virginia, Georgia); Tolman, Journal, xxix, 178 (Indiana); Belden's Missouri collection. The piece, as Barry has noted, is a variety of "The Brown Girl" (Child, No. 295), a ballad known in print in the latter half of the eighteenth century; or rather, as Kittredge suggests, it is mixed with a version of "The Brown Girl" similar to that taken down in Devonshire by Baring-Gould and printed by Child as Version B.
D. "A Rich Irish Lady." Communicated by Miss Lalah Lovett, Bulltown, Braxton County, May, 1917; obtained from Mr. John N. Wine, Napier, who learned it from his father.
1 There was a rich lady, from London she came;
A beauty she was, and Sally by name;
Her riches so great that no tongue could express them;
And her beauty was more than her riches at best.
2 There was a young man came to see her;
The squire's young son she then did deny;
She then did deny him and shun him with scorn;
I believe he'll reward her for what's past and gone.
3 There was six months came past, ere a little on a rise,
Miss Sally was taken with tears in her eyes.
Miss Sally was taken, they did not know why,
For the sake of this young man she once did deny.
4 They sent for this young man, the squire's young man
He says, "Am I the young man you sent for here?
Or am I the doctor, can kill or can cure?"
5 "I think you're the doctor, can kill or can cure;
Without your assistance I'm ruined, I'm sure."
"O Sally, O Sally, O Sally," said he,
"Don't you remember when I courted thee?
6 "You then did deny me and shun me with scorn;
And now I'll reward you for what's past and gone."
"For what's past and gone you must forget and forgive,
And grant me some longer life here to live."
7 "I'll never forget you, and that ain't the worst:
I'll dance on your grave when you're cold in the dust."
She pulled rings from her fingers, diamond rings three:
"Here, take these and wear them while dancing on me."
8 O Sally's now dead, as we all might suppose;
She has left to some lady all of her fine clothes.
She 's taken up her lodging in the banks of cold clay,
While her rosy red cheeks lay mouldering away.