Pretty Polly- Vestie Thompson (KY) 1917 Sharp K
[Two stanzas 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.
Two standard US stanza texts, first line not-repeated. Sharp's Diary: After the latter had cleared off we went out and caught Mrs. Thompson at home and took 3 songs from her, including a beautiful dorian version of Mrs Tom Price’s[?] Cruel Ship’s Carpenter tune.
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.
K. [Pretty Polly] The Cruel Ship's Carpenter- Sung by Mrs. VESTIE THOMPSON at Pineville, Bell Co., Ky., June 2, 1917
Hexatonic (no 7th).
She threw her arms a round him in a hug and fear,
Saying: How can you kill the poor girl when she loves you so dear?
He threw her in her grave and a way he did go,
And left but the small birds to hear her sad mourn.