Pretty Polly- Alice Sloan (KY) 1917 Sharp F
[Standard text 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. The 1932 notes follow.
This is the standard US text.
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.
F. [Pretty Polly] The Cruel Ship's Carpenter- Sung by Mrs. ALICE SLOAN at Barbourville, Knox Co., Ky., May 6, 1917
Pentatonic. Mode 2.
1. O Polly, pretty Polly, come and go with me,
O Polly, pretty Polly, come and go with me,
Before we get married some pleasure to see.
2 He led her over valleys and valleys so deep,
He caused pretty Polly to mourn and to weep.
3 A few steps further pretty Polly she spied
A grave was dug and the spade a-laying by.
4 No time is to weep, no time is to stand,
He drew a knife in his right hand.
5 He stabbed her to the heart and the blood it did flow,
Into the grave pretty Polly did go.
6 He threw some dirt over and turned to go home,
He left nothing behind him but small birds to roam.
7 A debt to the devil I've got to pay
For stealing pretty Polly and running away.