Pretty Polly- Jim Samples (KY) 1917 Sharp M
[My title. Single stanza 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.
Single US stanza text; Sharp's Diary: "About half way a heavy rain comes on and Maud and I pay a call on Mr Jim Samples who sings us one or two nice songs and gives us dinner."
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.
M. [Pretty Polly] The Cruel Ship's Carpenter- Sung by Mr. JIM SAMPLES at Goose Creek, Manchester, Clay Co., Ky., Aug. 16, 1917. * These F's were sung neutral.
Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, you're guessing just right,
Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, you're guessing just right,
Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, you're guessing just right,
I was digging your grave the bigger part of last night.