Pretty Polly- Oikle (NS) pre1931 Fauset
[From: Arthur Huff Fauset, Folklore from Nova Scotia (1931) p. 109; This starts off with the opening lines of the "Bailiff's Daughter" as some Nova Scotia and Northeast US versions do.
R. Matteson 2014]
PRETTY POLLY- sung by Rosie Oikle, of Liberpool, Nova Scotia pre-1931.
There was a youth, a fair well-loved youth,
A rich squire's son was he.
He courted her through one winter's night,
And part of a hot summer's day.
"Give me some of your mother's gold,
Give me some of your father's too,
Then we will go to some far coun-te-ree,
And married we shall be."
She went up to her father's stable door,
There stood horses thirty and three.
She mounted on her milk-white steed,
He on the iron gray.
They drove till they come to a broad river side,
"Alight, alight!" cried she.
"I have already drownded six maidens there,
You the seventh shall be.
Pull off, pull off your silk clothing,
And lie there on the green."
"For I don't think it's nice for a ruffian like you
A naked woman to see."
He turned his back towards her,
She plunged him in the sea.
"Don't sink, don't sink, you false young man,
Don't sink, don't sink!" cried she.
"If it's six pretty maidens already drownded here,
The seventh you shall be."
The parrot upon the window so high
Heard those very words she did say.
"Don't you pittle, don't you pattle, my polly dear,
Don't you tell no tales on to me.
For your cage shall be mated with those yellow-beaded gold,
Your doors all of i-vo-ry."
She mounted on her milk-white steed,
And homeward she did go.
She drove till she came to her father's stable door,
Three hours before it was day.