Seven Kings' Daughters- Maxie (VA) 1914 Davis Q
[From Davis, Traditional Ballads of Virginia; 1929, version Q with music. His notes follow. Inexplicably, this version is not in Bronson.
R. Matteson 2014]
LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT
(CHILD, NO.4)
THIS ballad is one of the few most frequently found in Virginia, where variously known as "Pretty Polly," "The Seven King's Daughters," "King's Daughter," "The Pretty Gold Leaf," "The Salt Water Sea," "Miss Mary's Parrot," and under several other titles. Its polyonymity is almost equal to its ubiquity - twenty-eight variants under sixteen different titles. In Virginia it does not, however, when compared with" Barbara Allen," "The House Carpenter" and several others quite live up to its reputation of having obtained the widest circulation of all ballads. Child's remarkable introduction to this ballad discusses at some length its extraordinary currency in the southern as well as the northern nations of Europe. Space is also given to a consideration of the hypothesis that the ballad is a wild shoot from the story of Judith and Holofernes, with Holofernes the original of the Elf-Knight. Child concludes; "It is a supposition attended with less difficulty that an independent European tradition existed of a half-human, half-demonic being, who possessed an irresistible power of decoying away young maids, and was wont to kill them after he got them into his hands, but who at last found one who was more than his match, and lost his own life through her craft and courage. A modification of this story is afforded by the large class of Bluebeard tales."
All the Virginia texts correspond much more closely with the Child series C-G (and Sargent and Kittredge H) than to A and B. Warning might perhaps be given of the confusion of Pollies in most of the Virginia texts. The girl and the parrot have the same name and are not always immediately distinguishable.
For American findings of this ballad see Barry, No. 4; Belden, No. 1 (fragment); Brown, p. 9 (North Carolina); Bulletin, Nos. 2-4, 6-12; Campbell and Sharp, No. 2 (Massachusetts, North Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia); Child, III, 496 (Virginia, from The Folk-Lore Journal, VII, p. 28); Cox, No. I and p. 521 (fragment and melody); Hudson, No. I (Mississippi); Jones, p. 301 (fragment); Journal, XVIII, 132 (Barry, Massachusetts, text and melody); XIX, 232 (Belden, Missouri); XXII, 65 (Beatty, Wisconsin), 76 (Barry, New Jersey, melody only), 374 (Barry, Massachusetts, text and melody, Missouri), 344 (Barry, Massachusetts); XXVII, 90 (Gardner, Michigan); XXVIII, 148 (Perrow, North Carolina); XXXV, 338 (Tolman and Eddy, Ohio); Mackenzie, Ballads, No. I, and p. 391 (melody); Sandburg, P: 60 (R. W. Gordon Collection); Scarborough, p. 43 (Texas, text and melody); Shearin, p. 3; Shearin and Combs, p. 7; Reed Smith, No. I; Reed Smith, Ballads, No. I; Wyman and Brockway, p. 82. For additional references, see Cox, p. 3; Journal, XXIX.
Q. "The Seven Kings' Daughters," collected-by Miss Juliet Fauntleroy. Sung by Mrs. Dan Maxie (nee Holland) of Altavista Va., Franklin County. March 23, 1914, with music. Miss Fauntleroy writes, "This is evidently only the ending, but it is all that Mrs. Maxie can remember. She used to hear her mother sing it when she was a child."
She picked him up so shyly,
She hauled him in the sea.
"Lie there, lie there, you false-eyed vilyun
Instead of me.
Six of the king's daughters you've drownded,
And the seventh one you shall be."