Pretty Polly- Frances Richards (VA) 1918 Sharp T
[My title. 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. Additional text from Sharp's MS. The 1932 notes follow.
Single stanza US standard middle to end text, missing the opening. "He went raving distracted" is similar to the early broadsides. 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.
T. [Pretty Polly] The Cruel Ship's Carpenter Sung by Mrs. FRANCES RICHARDS at St. Peter's School, Callaway, Va., Aug. 16, 1918. Hexatonic (no 6th).
She threw her arms round him, she suffered no fear,
She threw her arms 'round him, she suffered no fear.
How can you kill the girl that has loved you so dear?
No time to study, no time to stand,
He drew his knife into his right hand.
He stabbed her to the heart and the blood it did flow,
And into the grave her poor body did go.
He threw some dirt over her and turned to go home,
Leaving nothing but the birds to mourn.
Gentlemen and ladies I'll bid you goodnight,
He went raving distracted and died the same night.