Pretty Polly- Flora McDowell (TN) c.1899 McDowell
[From: Memory Melodies- A Collection of Folk-Songs from Middle Tennessee- McDowell; 1947. This is one of several hybrid songs sung in waltz time that have stanzas of Pretty Polly mixed with stanzas of The Cuckoo/Wagoner's Lad/Rye Whiskey family of songs.
See an additional stanza with notes from McDowell's book below.
R. Matteson 2016]
PRETTY POLLY Flora (b. 1890) and Lucien (b. 1884) McDowell as remembered from their youth.
1. Pretty Polly, Pretty Polly , would you think it unkind,
If I were to sit, by you and tell you my mind?
My mind is to marry and never to part,
For the first time I saw you, you wounded my heart.
2. Pretty Polly, Pretty Polly, would you think it amiss,
if I were to sit with you and steal me a kiss.
I'll eat when I'm hungry, I'll drink when I'm dry
If a tree don't fall on me I'll live till I die.[1]
1. My footnote- the last two lines are part of Rye Whiskey songs, not usually Pretty Polly. The next stanza (below) is part of Wagoner's Lad and not part of Pretty Polly.
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The two verses and the tune are as remembered by Mrs. McDowell and her husband, who both heard them in their youth, sung by Ed Rascoe, Luther Charles and others. Mrs. W.F. Lassiter, also, remembers them in the same form, and adds the following stanza, which she says belongs to the same song:
At the foot of yon mountain there lies the cold snow,
There could be my lodging and there I must go.
"Come put up your horses and feed them some hay,
My horses aren't hungry, they won't eat your hay."