Pretty Polly- Sophie Ann Hensley (KY) 1917 Sharp N
[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 stanza US standard opening text. not sure if theses Hensleys are related to the Madison County, NC Hensleys.
Sharp's Diary: Started at 6:15 for the Hensleys only to find Mrs. Hensley in bed — too ill to sing, alas! Our bad luck follows us! Her daughter Sophie Annie gave us what she could but it was nothing of any great value.
I assume her mother or at least a close relative was Louisa Hensley who gave a version to Olive Dame Campbell in 1908. See that version for additional text.
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.
N. [Pretty Polly] The Cruel Ship's Carpenter -Sung by Mrs. SOPHIE ANNIE HENSLEY at Oneida, Clay Co., Ky., Aug. 20, 1917. Pentatonic Mode 2.
Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, come go along with me,
Pretty Polly, pretty Polly, come go along with me,
Before we get married some pleasures to see.