Outlandish Knight- Sara Porter (Sus) 1965 REC
[From: Just Another Saturday Night: Sussex 1960, (MT CD 309-10), liner notes follow.
R. Matteson 2018]
Sarah Ann Porter was born in 1905 and died aged 75 in 1980. She came from the travelling family of Williams, her mother being a Barton from Rogate in Hampshire. Sarah Porter - photo courtesy Ambrose PorterThey travelled extensively in Sussex, Kent, Surrey and Hampshire, following the usual traditional occupations, mainly fruit and hop picking.
Outlandish Knight- sung by Sara Porter of Greenwoods Lane, Heathfield, East Sussex. Recorded in 1965 in The Three Cups, Punnetts Town).
Oh go and get me some of you mother's money
And some of your father's gold,
And two of the best nags from the stable
What they do stand thirty and three.
He mounted on the chestnut bay
And she on the lily white grey
They rid til they came to the deep river side
Three hours before it was day.
"Oh, my pretty Polly,
Don't tell no tales upon me
I have drowned six pretty maids drowned here
And the seventh one you shall be.
"Oh, my pretty Polly,
Don't tell no tales upon me
Your house shall be made of the best ivory,
And the gates of the glitters of gold."
An incredibly popular ballad all over the world, with 570 Roud entries - almost 300 of which are from the USA. England boasts about 170, only nine of which are from Sussex. It's quite unusual to find it in the Traveller repertoire - I only recognise the names of Charlotte Renals, Mary Ann Haynes, May Bradley and Nelson Ridley in the list.
It goes by a wide variety of titles, the present one being the most popular in Britain. On the face of it this is rather odd, since it derives from the classic Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, by which title it is widely known in North America, yet I can find no instance of a singer from these islands using that name. The story is extremely old - beyond Lady Isabel it is traceable, in eastern Europe at least, back a millennium or more!
In the USA it is also frequently called Pretty Polly (about 60 instances), which is also a little odd since the heroine of the story is rarely so named in the British ballads from which the American ones have developed - clearly they like the parrot over there ... and so do I - feeling that a ballad is not really a ballad without at least one exotic bird and a bottomless boat to put your foot in!
Although there are 35 sound recordings noted, few appear to have made it onto the digital medium, and only Jumbo Brightwell (NLCD3 and Rounder 1741), Mary Ann Haynes (TSCD 661) and Fred Jordan (TSCD 600) are available on CD.