King's Seven Daughters- Clement (WV) 1917 Davis M
[From Davis, Traditional Ballads of Virginia; 1929. His notes follow.
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.
M. "King's Seven Daughters." Sent in by Mrs. N. E. Clement, of Chatham, Va. Pittsylvania County, July 25, 1917.
1 "Go take part of your father's,
Likewise of your mother's fee,
And take two horses from your father's barn,
Where stand thirty and three."
2 She took part of her father's gold
Likewise her mother's fee,
And took two horses out of the barn,
Where there were thirty and three.
3 She mounted the bonny, bonny brown,
While he the dapple grey,
And rode until they came to the sea, salt sea,
And 't was just three hours to day.
4 "Take off, take off those costly gems,
And hang on yonder tree;
For six of the king's daughters I have drowned,
And the seventh you shall be.
5 "Take off, take off your white silk gown,
Hang it on yonder tree;
For 't is too rich and too costly
To rot in yonder sea."
6 "You turn your body round about,
With your back to yonder tree;
For ain't it a pity for a rebel like you
A naked woman to see."
7 He turned his body round about
With his back to the leaves of the tree;
She tripped him into the sea, salt sea,
And she tripped him into the sea.
B "Lie there, lie there, you false-hearted man,
Lie there instead of me,
For you promised to take me to fair Scotland,
And there to marry me."
9 She mounted the bonny, bonny brown,
And led the dappled grey;
And rode until she came to her father's home,
'Twas just an hour till day.
10 "O hush, O hush, my pretty little bird,
Don't patter so long before day,
For your cage shall be made of beaten, beaten gold
And the doors of ivory."