Cruel Ship's Carpenter- Fitzgerald (NC) 1918 Sharp Q
[Single stanza with music from English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians; Volume I; 1917 and 1932. Collected by Cecil J. Sharp and Olive Dame Campbell. Edited by Maud Karpeles. The 1932 notes follow.
Single stanza US similar to Gosport Tragedy opening text. Sharp's Diary:
R. Matteson 2016]
No. 49. The Cruel Ship's Carpenter (1932 notes)
Texts without tunes:—Broadsides by Pitts, Jackson & Son, and Bloomer (Birmingham). Ashton's A Century of Ballads, p. 101.
Texts with tunes :—Christie's Traditional Ballad Airs, ii. 99. Journal of the Folk-Song Society, i. 172. Folk Songs from Somerset, No. 83 (published also in English Folk Songs, Selected Edition, i. 4, and One Hundred English Folk-Songs, p. 4). Cox's Folk Songs of the South , pp. 308 (see also further references) and 528. Wyman and Brockway's Twenty Kentucky Mountain Songs, p. 110, and Lonesome Tunes, p. 79. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xx. 262.
Q. The Cruel Ship's Carpenter - Sung by Mr. CLINTON FITZGERALD at Royal Orchard, Afton, Va., April 28, 1918
Hexatonic (no 7th).
1. In sea-port of late a fair damsel did dwell,
For wit and for beauty few her did excel;
She was courted by William for to be his dear,
And he by his trade was ship's carpenter.