Polly Vaughn- Emma Dusenbury (AR) c.1933 BK
[From: The Dusenbury songs: being the seventy traditional songs collected from the singing of Emma Dusenbury of Mena, Ark., at various dates between Aug. 27th, 1933 & Aug. 10th, 1936
R. Matteson 2016]
POLLY VAUGHN- from Emma Dusenbury of Mena, Ark., c. 1933.
Come all ye jolly fellows who delight in a gun.,
Beware of late fowling at the setting of the sun;
For I were out fowling, hit was just before dark;
I shot my own true love, and I wounded her heart.
The evening being a late one, the shower came on;
She crept beneath a thorn bush, the shower to shun,
With an apron pinned around her, I tuck her for a swan,
And now to my sorrow, I killed my Polly Vaughn.
He threw down his rifle, to the house he did run,
Saying "Father, oh father, Lord what have I done!
I've killed a dear female, was the joy of my life,
And if she had lived, Oh I'd have made her my wife.
Up stepped his old father with his hair all so grey,
Saying "Jimmy, oh Jimmy, pray don't run away,
But stay in your own country till your trial comes on,
And I think you'll be cleared by the laws of our land."
The day of his trial, to her uncle she appeared
Saying, "Uncle, dear Uncle, Jimmy Reynolds is cleared;
with an apron pinned around me he tuck me for a swan,
And now to his sorrow he killed his Polly Vaughn."
The girls of Carolina need not to be glad,
Polly Vaughn is the fairest although she be dead;
These girls were all seated all out in a row,
Polly Vaughn is the fairest in a mountain of snow.