Pretty Molly- Lillie Perry (NC) 1915 Brown E
[Fragmented text from The Brown Collection of NC Folklore II, 1953. Their notes follow.
This version has collected by an unreliable source, Thomas Smith then of Zionville, NC. The text is unusually fragmented with two incomplete stanzas and the last stanza out of place (beginning stanza).
R. Matteson 2016]
64. The Gosport Tragedy
Of the many ballads sung in America about the man who murders his sweetheart, sometimes from jealousy but more often because, having got her with child, he wants to be rid of her — 'Florella,' 'Oma Wise,' 'Pearl Bryan,' 'Leo Frank and Mary Fagan,' etc. — two go back definitely to English broadsides : 'The Gosport Tragedy' ('Pretty Polly,' 'The Cruel Ship's Carpenter') and 'The Wexford Girl' ('The Oxford Girl,' 'The Lexington Girl,' 'The Wittam Miller,' 'The Berkshire Tragedy'). Much alike in plot and sometimes fading into one another, they may conveniently be distinguished by certain items in the story. In 'The Gosport Tragedy' the killer tells his victim that he has been digging her grave all the night before; in 'The Wexford Girl' he explains the blood on his clothes by saying that it was 'bleeding at the nose.' These items mark the respective original broadsides and can be traced through most if not all the later traditional versions.
The earliest known form of 'The Gosport Tragedy' is a "garland" in the Roxburghe collection (Roxb. Ballads viii 143-4, 173-4), dated by Ebsworth "circa 1750." In modern times it has been reported from tradition in Sussex (JFSS i 172-3), Nova Scotia (BSSNS 96-8), Virginia (SharpK i 326-7, SCSM 131-4), West Virginia (FSS 308-10), Kentucky (JAFL xx 261-4, where Kittredge points out in a note that the Harvard Library has copies of both the original garland and later English broadsides, JAFL xiii 276-8, LT 79-81, BKH 69-70, SharpK i 319-20, 321-5, FSSH 229-30, 222; it is listed also in Shearin's syllabus), Tennessee (ETWVMB 74-5. SharpK i 318-19, BTFLS iii 85), North Carolina (SharpK I 317, 320-1. 327, SCSM 128-31, SSSA 53-4, JAFL xiv 134-5). Georgia (JAFL xiiv 107-8, FSSH 231-2), Florida (FSF 341-2), Missouri (OFS 11 112-14), and Indiana (BSI 298-9). It is perhaps worth remarking that with the exception of Mackenzie's Nova Scotia text it does not appear in the Northeast.
There is an excellent recording of a Virginia version of 'The Gosport Tragedy,' under the title 'Pretty Polly,' in the Library of Congress. Music Division, Archive of American Folk Song (Folk Music of the United States, Album I), which, according to Alan Lomax, illustrates unconscious editing of the English broadside by the American folk. "The product of this process of folk editing — Pretty Polly — is The American Tragedy in six brilliant stanzas (the same subject that occupies a ponderous volume in Theodore Dreiser's work of that name)."
E . 'Pretty Molly.' Contributed by Thomas Smith of Zionville, Watauga county, in 1915, as sung by Mrs. Lillie Perry and her daughter Susie, who had learned it from the singing of others. A much reduced and imperfect text. It is not easy to make out from the manuscript whether the stanzas should be of three lines, or two, or four. No attempt therefore is here made to fill it out.
'O come, pretty Molly, and go with me,
come, pretty Molly, and go with me,
We'll go and get married some pleasure to see.'
They traveled over mountains and valleys so deep {repeat)
. . . .
They rode a piece further and what did they spy {repeat)
Her grave had been made and a spade close by.
He threw the dirt o'er her and turned for home
. . . .
'Now a debt to the devil I have to pay
For stealing pretty Molly and running away.
I courted pretty Molly one eve and night[1]
And left the next morning before it was light.'
1. This stanza is obviously misplaced.