Pretty Polly- Chad Caldwell (KY) 1937 REC Lomax
[Fragment from LOC recording by Lomax in the Boyd County / Ashland, Kentucky area of 4 year old Chad Caldwell. Berea notes follow.
R. Matteson 2016]
Notes: These eastern Kentucky singers and musicians were among many recruited by Jean Thomas (1882-1982) to perform at her American Folk Song Festival, a pageant-like event staged in the Boyd County / Ashland, Kentucky area beginning in 1930 and which continued until her retirement in 1972. The festival followed an unchanging script that Thomas said was intended to show "authentic sequences in America's musical history." Overall it reflected the belief of Thomas and many of her contemporaries that the speech patterns, songs, and other traditions of early British Isles settlers still survived in Appalachia.
The announcement following by Jean Thomas, who gives Caldwell's age as four.
Pretty Polly- sung by Chad Caldwell, 4 years old; Lomax recording made June 28, 1937 in Ashland, Kentucky; Boyd County.
Listen: https://archive.org/details/afc1937007_1022B1
"Polly, pretty Polly, come go along with me,
Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, come go along with me
Before we got married some pleasures to see."
"Polly, pretty Polly, will you think me unkind,
Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, will you think me unkind,
If I sit down beside you and tell you my mind."
"My mind is to marry and never to part,
My mind is to marry and never to part,
As soon as I saw you, you wounded my heart."