Pretty Polly- Doyel (MO) 1917 Barbour, Belden H
[From: Some Fusions in Missouri Ballads by Frances M. Barbour in The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 49, No. 193 (Jul. - Sep., 1936), pp. 207-214. Belden (see following) dates this as 1917 and Barbour says this a rare "Missouri" version which in reality is one of many.
Belden, who lists this as version H, writes in Ballads and Songs, collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society; 1940:
"H. 'Pretty Polly.' Taken down in 1917 from the singing of Minnie Doyel of Arlington, Phelps County, by Miss Frances Barbour of Washington University. Imperfectly remembered. Miss Barbour has printed it in JAFL XLIX 1914 [date is 1936]. The concluding stanza has been influenced by the bird stanzas of Young Hunting."
R. Matteson 2011, 2014]
PRETTY POLLY
(Child 4, "Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight")
. . . .
. . . .
"I have drowned here six fair ladies,
And the seventh one you will be.
"Take off those costly robes you wear
And fold them here by me -
They are too costly and too fine
To float on the salt, salt sea."
"Turn your back around to me--"
. . . .
She picked him up quite manfully
And plunged him into the sea.
Saying, "Lie there, lie there, you false-hearted man,
Lie there instead of me,
Your clothes are not too costly and too fine
To float on the salt, salt sea."
She mounted on the milk-white steed
And led the dappled gray,
And rode into her own dear home;
It was three long hours till day.
"Come down, come down, my pretty little parrot
And sit upon my knee,"
. . . .
. . . .
"I won't come down, I can't come down
And sit upon your knee -
The way you've murdered your own true love
I'm afraid you'll murder me."
In this fragmentary remnant of a ballad which is quite rare in Missouri (I believe only one other variant[1] has been reported from there) there occurs a very unusual borrowing. The parrot in this variant behaves in an altogether different manner from what he does in any other variant that I have examined. Ordinarily he calls to his mistress on her return, arousing her irate father, who questions him. For a minute we tremble for the fate of a young person who has recently made off with many of her parents' worldly possessions. But the parrot displays a remarkable resourcefulness, explaining that he had called for his mistress to drive the cat away from him. The parrot is rewarded by his mistress with a gold and ivory cage.
The bird of the Phelps County version behaves like an accusing conscience. He is so different, in fact, that one immediately suspects a substitution, for ballads have a way of holding to the essential facts of the story in the midst of verbal changes. As it happens, a bird from an entirely different ballad has been substituted for the girl's parrot. The source of this strangely misfit bird is "Loving Henry"[2] and similarity of situation is sufficient reason for the shifting of this bird to "Pretty Polly." A jealous girl murders her lover and throws his body into a well. Finding the bird a witness to her crime, she calls to it as follows:
"Fly down, fly down, little birdie," she called,
"And sit on my right knee,
For the costly cords that's round my waist
Will be supplied to thee."
To this the bird answers:
"I could fly down if I would fly down
And sit upon your knee;
But the way you murdered your own true love
Surely you would murder me."
Here certainly a desire for elaborateness could not have prompted the shift, for the lines from "Loving Henry" are much less colorful than the lines which they have replaced. In this case, I believe, a singer's memory harbored two birds which were interchangeable, and after a lapse of time this confusion resulted.
1 H. M. Belden, Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. XIX, p. 232.
2 Child 68; also George L. Kittredge, Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. XX, p. 253.