US & Canada Versions: 57A. William Guiseman/Captain Glen/New York Trader
[Bronson gives the related ballads of "Brown Robyn's Confession" in an Appendix. The ballad titles in the US and Canada include:
Captain Glen ["Captain Glen's Unhappy Voyage to New Barbary"]- Child C
William Glen
The New York Trader
William Ismael
The earliest version is the broadside 'William Grismond's Downfal,' of 1650, which is transcribed among the Percy papers, from Ballard's collection. It was reprinted as "The Downfall Of William Grismond," see text from The Roxburghe Ballads below.
I've titled this William Guiseman after the traditional version from Ancient Scottish Ballads, edited by George Ritchie Kinloch 1827 [Child B]. "Captain Glen's Unhappy Voyage to New Barbary," another early broadside from 1794, has a tune included in Motherwell's Minstresy.
The first US printing that I'm aware of was Lowens's no. 247, a songster/song with the title, "Captain Glen's Unhappy Voyage to New Barbary," published July 1803, probably in Philadelphia(Cohen). The broadside "Captain Glen's Unhappy Voyage to New Barbaree," (see below) by Leonard Deming in Boston c. 1829. Around 1846 it appeared in the Forget-Me Not-Songster. These print versions have the same text so look at the text in the Forget-Me-Not Songster.
The rest of the versions are all traditional and quite old, except Peacock's version.
R. Matteson 2012, 2014]
The Deming Broadside- Early 1800s Boston
CONTENTS:
1) Captain Glen- Forget-Me-Not Songster (MA) c. 1846/ also Deming Broadside -- From the Forget-Me-Not Songster c.1846. "Captain Glen's Unhappy Voyage to New Barbary" is a broadside traced back to England in the 1770s and a later printing in 1794. This and the Deming broadside (c.1829) were both printed in Boston.
2) William Ismael- Atwood (VT) pre1919 Sturgis -- From Songs from the Hills of Vermont; Sturgis, 1919. James Atwood who died ten years after the book was published was born March 7, 1845 and his father was born in the late 1700s. The date is considerably older than 1919. This is the only extant version of the this ballad which is related to Captain Glen and also Child 57. Apparently it is derived from "The Downfall of William Grisman" (1650 broadside).
3) The New York Trader- Hines (NS) 1919 Mackenzie -- From: The Quest of the Ballad by William Roy Mackenzie 1919. Reprinted in Ballads and Songs from Nova Scotia, 1928. Sung by Peter Hines; Tatmagouche, Colchester County, Nova Scotia.
4) Captain Glen- Tillett (NC) 1924 Chappell -- From: Chappell's Folk Songs of the Roanoke and the Albemarle; 1939. The informant Charles Kitchen Tillett Sr. (b. August, 19, 1873 in Wanchese, Dare, North Carolina-- d. April 6, 1941 in Wanchese, Dare, North Carolina) was a musician and fisherman on Roanoke Island, NC.
5) William Glen- Harrison (NS) 1928 Mackenzie
6) Captain Glen- Henneberry (NS) pre1932 Creighton
7) New York Trader- Mahoney (NL) 1952 Peacock
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The Forget-Me-Not Songsters and Their Role in the American Folksong Tradition
Norm Cohen
American Music, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), pp. 137-219
14. "Captain Glen" [Laws K 22a] A reference in Roxburghe Ballads, where the ballad is titled "An Excellent New Song, entitled Captain Glen," dates the piece to ca. 1770.[90] The songster text is almost identical with one that Logan says was published on a broadside bearing the date 1794. [91] Lowens's no. 247 is a songster/song with the title, "Captain Glen's Unhappy Voyage to New Barbary," published July 1803, probably in Philadelphia. Compare also Ford no. 3003.[92] In the ballad William Glen confesses to murder and the crew throws him overboard to calm the storm. In spite of its appearance in numerous nineteenth-century American songsters and broadsides, the ballad has not often been recovered from oral tradition. A Nova Scotian version, surely learned from the FMNS, is given by Mackenzie, who considers "The New York Trader" almost certainly to be a rewriting of "Captain Glen."[93] Other recovered texts are from Nova Scotia and North Carolina.[94] This is one of the few texts that varies in different editions of the FMNS: In Type IIa editions there are numerous small differences and the final stanza is missing; furthermore, in one of them (LC 1840a) the second and third pages are out of order.
90. William Chappell, ed., Roxburghe Ballads (1869;1 877;r pt., New York:A MS Press, 1966), 8:141.
91. W.H . Logan, A Pedlar's Pack of Ballads and Songs (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1869), 47.
92. Ford, Broadsides, Ballads & c., 403.
93. Mackenzie, Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia 2, 39-40. The text is word for word identical with the text of the non-IIa editions.
94. Creighton, SBNS, 111; Chappell, FSRA, 6