Come A Link- Stinnet (VA) 1924 Davis D
[The title is probably from the informant. Single stanza with music from Davis, Traditional Ballads of Virginia; 1929. His notes follow.
Stanza 10 appears to be taken from Clyde's Water (Child #216) and mixed with Child 4. Stanza 11 appears in "All the Good Times Are Passed and Gone" and is a floating stanza.
R. Matteson 2014]
LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT
(CHILD, NO.4)
THIS ballad is one of the few most frequently found in Virginia, where variously known as "Pretty Polly," "The Seven King's Daughters," "King's Daughter," "The Pretty Gold Leaf," "The Salt Water Sea," "Miss Mary's Parrot," and under several other titles. Its polyonymity is almost equal to its ubiquity - twenty-eight variants under sixteen different titles. In Virginia it does not, however, when compared with" Barbara Allen," "The House Carpenter" and several others quite live up to its reputation of having obtained the widest circulation of all ballads. Child's remarkable introduction to this ballad discusses at some length its extraordinary currency in the southern as well as the northern nations of Europe. Space is also given to a consideration of the hypothesis that the ballad is a wild shoot from the story of Judith and Holofernes, with Holofernes the original of the Elf-Knight. Child concludes; "It is a supposition attended with less difficulty that an independent European tradition existed of a half-human, half-demonic being, who possessed an irresistible power of decoying away young maids, and was wont to kill them after he got them into his hands, but who at last found one who was more than his match, and lost his own life through her craft and courage. A modification of this story is afforded by the large class of Bluebeard tales."
All the Virginia texts correspond much more closely with the Child series C-G (and Sargent and Kittredge H) than to A and B. Warning might perhaps be given of the confusion of Pollies in most of the Virginia texts. The girl and the parrot have the same name and are not always immediately distinguishable.
For American findings of this ballad see Barry, No. 4; Belden, No. 1 (fragment); Brown, p. 9 (North Carolina); Bulletin, Nos. 2-4, 6-12; Campbell and Sharp, No. 2 (Massachusetts, North Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia); Child, III, 496 (Virginia, from The Folk-Lore Journal, VII, p. 28); Cox, No. I and p. 521 (fragment and melody); Hudson, No. I (Mississippi); Jones, p. 301 (fragment); Journal, XVIII, 132 (Barry, Massachusetts, text and melody); XIX, 232 (Belden, Missouri); XXII, 65 (Beatty, Wisconsin), 76 (Barry, New Jersey, melody only), 374 (Barry, Massachusetts, text and melody, Missouri), 344 (Barry, Massachusetts); XXVII, 90 (Gardner, Michigan); XXVIII, 148 (Perrow, North Carolina); XXXV, 338 (Tolman and Eddy, Ohio); Mackenzie, Ballads, No. I, and p. 391 (melody); Sandburg, P: 60 (R. W. Gordon Collection); Scarborough, p. 43 (Texas, text and melody); Shearin, p. 3; Shearin and Combs, p. 7; Reed Smith, No. I; Reed Smith, Ballads, No. I; Wyman and Brockway, p. 82. For additional references, see Cox, p. 3; Journal, XXIX.
D. "The King's Daughter" or "Come a Link, Come a Long." Collected by Miss Juliet Fauntleroy. Sung by Mr. Ed Stinnet, of Lynch Station, Va. Campbell County. April 11, 1924. With music.
1 "You followed me up, you followed me down,
You followed me day by day,
You neither had the tongue for to tell me yea,
Nor the heart for to turn me away."
2 "I followed you up, I followed you down,
I followed you day by day,
I neither had the tongue for to tell you yea,
Nor the heart to turn you away."
3 She got upon the little pony[1] brown,
He got up on the gray,
They rode 'till they came to the blue, salt sea,
Come a link, come a long summer day.
4 "Get down, get down, my pretty fair Miss,
And fold your silk veil on my knee,
For it's cost your father too much money
To rot in the blue salt sea."
5 H. turned his head around. and about
Till he faced to the leaves of the tree,
[She took him hastily up in her arms] [2]
And she splunged [3] him into the blue, salt sea.
6 "Oh, hand me down your white lily hand,
Oh, hand it down to me,
[Oh, hand me down your white lily hand,]
And married we shall be."
7 "No, sir, for you have drownded
Nine of the kings' daughters fair,
[Bear you them company],
You lie there in the place of me."
8 She got on the little pony brown,
And she led the iron gray,
She rode till she came to her father's gate,
Just three hours until day.
9. "Wake up, wake up dear parents
And tell no tales on me.
All the crimes that I have done
Hangs on a green willow tree."
10 She got on the little pony brown,
And she started off at full speed.
The golden rings flew off her fingers,
And her nose begin to bleed."
11 "And I wish to the Lord I had never been born,
Or had died when I was young,
I'd never been here to shed a tear,
Nor to listen to your lying tongue."
1. Probably for bonny.
2. The bracketed words appear to be those about which the collector is uncertain or which she has supplied.
3. Either expressive for plunged or the remains of "she has plunged." [Curiously not the only version using splunged.]
3 The final stanza and part of the one before have been contaminated from a later folk-song.