Six Kings' Daughters- Clark (VA) c1871 Davis O
[My title, John Stone gives the generic titles. From Davis, Traditional Ballads of Virginia; 1929. His notes follow. Stanzas 5-7 are irregular.
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.
O. [Six Kings' Daughters] "Lady Isabel and the Elf Night" or "Pretty Polly," collected by Mr. John Stone. Recited by Mr. J. B. Clark, of Waverly, Va. Sussex County. July 13, 1921. Mr. Clark heard this ballad "about fifty years ago, when he was a boy in Prince George Co., Va."
1 "Light you down, your pretty kind miss,
And make your biddance to me;
For six king's daughters have I drowned here,
And the seventh you shall be."
2 Saying, "Pull off your silks and satins,
Give them here to me;
For they are too costly to rot
With you and your bodie.
3. Says, "Turn your back to the broad waterside
And your face to the green willow tree."
She picked him up in her lily-white arms
And hove him over in the sea.
4 Says, "Lie there, you false-hearted villain,
Lie there in the place of me,
For you tried to rob me of my clothing,
But not a thread do I crave from thee."
5 She mounted her milk-white steed
And led the southern gray;
She rode high, she rode low,
She came to her father's barn
One hour before it was day.
6. . . .
. . . .
"Pretty maid, where have you been
All this long summer day?"
7 "Hush your tongue, Polly,
And tell no tales on me;
For in a wooden cage you have stayed,
But a gold one I'll give thee,
And hang it to the green willow tree."