Cruel Ship's Carpenter- Buckner (NC) 1916 Sharp E
[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.
This is unique opening stanza for the ballad and found only in another version, Sharp U. Unfortunately the complete text was never taken down for either but 8 additional two line stanzas were found in Sharp's MS. Clearly this version is parallel to the broadside and introduces new information not usually found in Appalachia (the last two lines, for example).
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.
E. The Cruel Ship's Carpenter- Sung by Mrs. SARAH BUCKNER at Black Mountain, N. C, Sept. 18, 1916. Pentatonic. Mode 2.
There was a mason who lived by his trade,
And he had for his daughter a beautiful maid.
For wit and for beauty there was none to compare;
For old sweetheart was a ship's carpenter.
One morning so early just at the break of day,
He come to her window and called her away,
Saying: "Rise up fair Polly and go away with me,
Before we can wed, love, a friend we'll go and see.
He took her over hollows and valleys so deep,
at length the fair creature began for to weep.
For the sake of your infant please spare me my life,
And let me go destruction [distracted] and not be your wife