Pretty Polly- Gertrude Allen (NC) pre1943 Brown D
[From The Brown Collection of NC Folklore II, 1953, end stanzas only; no date given. Their notes follow. This version is almost identical to an MS in the Abrams Collection as sung by Edna Smith on April 18, 1938. Both have the ship sinking, this by an iceberg!!
R. Matteson 2016]
64. The Gosport Tragedy
Of the many ballads sung in America about the man who murders his sweetheart, sometimes from jealousy but more often because, having got her with child, he wants to be rid of her — 'Florella,' 'Oma Wise,' 'Pearl Bryan,' 'Leo Frank and Mary Fagan,' etc. — two go back definitely to English broadsides : 'The Gosport Tragedy' ('Pretty Polly,' 'The Cruel Ship's Carpenter') and 'The Wexford Girl' ('The Oxford Girl,' 'The Lexington Girl,' 'The Wittam Miller,' 'The Berkshire Tragedy'). Much alike in plot and sometimes fading into one another, they may conveniently be distinguished by certain items in the story. In 'The Gosport Tragedy' the killer tells his victim that he has been digging her grave all the night before; in 'The Wexford Girl' he explains the blood on his clothes by saying that it was 'bleeding at the nose.' These items mark the respective original broadsides and can be traced through most if not all the later traditional versions.
The earliest known form of 'The Gosport Tragedy' is a "garland" in the Roxburghe collection (Roxb. Ballads viii 143-4, 173-4), dated by Ebsworth "circa 1750." In modern times it has been reported from tradition in Sussex (JFSS i 172-3), Nova Scotia (BSSNS 96-8), Virginia (SharpK i 326-7, SCSM 131-4), West Virginia (FSS 308-10), Kentucky (JAFL xx 261-4, where Kittredge points out in a note that the Harvard Library has copies of both the original garland and later English broadsides, JAFL xiii 276-8, LT 79-81, BKH 69-70, SharpK i 319-20, 321-5, FSSH 229-30, 222; it is listed also in Shearin's syllabus), Tennessee (ETWVMB 74-5. SharpK i 318-19, BTFLS iii 85), North Carolina (SharpK I 317, 320-1. 327, SCSM 128-31, SSSA 53-4, JAFL xiv 134-5). Georgia (JAFL xiiv 107-8, FSSH 231-2), Florida (FSF 341-2), Missouri (OFS 11 112-14), and Indiana (BSI 298-9). It is perhaps worth remarking that with the exception of Mackenzie's Nova Scotia text it does not appear in the Northeast.
There is an excellent recording of a Virginia version of 'The Gosport Tragedy,' under the title 'Pretty Polly,' in the Library of Congress. Music Division, Archive of American Folk Song (Folk Music of the United States, Album I), which, according to Alan Lomax, illustrates unconscious editing of the English broadside by the American folk. "The product of this process of folk editing — Pretty Polly — is The American Tragedy in six brilliant stanzas (the same subject that occupies a ponderous volume in Theodore Dreiser's work of that name)."
D. 'Pretty Polly.' Contributed by Mrs. R. C. Vaught (then Miss Gertrude Allen) from Oakboro, Stanly county. It is a reduced form, though it has the gist of the story. Many of the lines are repeated, in the fashion shown by the concluding stanzas, which run:
9 He threw some sod over her and started for home,
He threw some sod over her and started for home,
Leaving no one with pretty Polly but the wild beast to roam.
10 He saw a ship come a-sailing around the sea side,
He saw a ship come a-sailing around the sea side.
He bid that ship for to take him a ride.
11 He sailed the ocean over. His heart was content.
He sailed the ocean over. His heart was content.
But the ship struck a iceberg and to the bottom it went.
12 On to hell Sweet Willie did go ;
On to hell Sweet Willie did go
To pay to the Devil the debt he did owe.
13 Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, she's gone on to rest.
Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, she's gone on to rest.
Where is Sweet Willie? In hell, I do guess.