Pretty Polly- Nanny Smith (KY) 1917 Sharp O
[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. The 1932 notes follow.
The single stanza of text appears to be where Polly returns as a ghost. Unfortunately the full text was not taken. Sharp's Diary: "Then on to Mrs Polly Patrick who with Mrs Nanny Jones sang us several."
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.
O. [Pretty Polly] The Cruel Ship's Carpenter - Sung by Mrs. Sung by Mrs. NANNY SMITH at Manchester, Clay Co., Ky., Aug. 24, 1917. Pentatonic. Mode 2.
A ship it was sailing on the full flowing tide,
There he saw pretty Polly down by the sea side.