By:Traditional · Source Recording: Song details
Oh Polly Pretty Polly would you take me unkind
Polly Pretty Polly would you take me unkind
Let me set beside you and tell you my mind
Well my mind is to marry and never to part
My mind is to marry and never to part
The first time I saw you it wounded my heart
Oh Polly Pretty Polly come go along with me
Polly Pretty Polly come go along with me
Before we get married some pleasures we'll see
Oh he led her over mountains and valleys so deep
Led her over mountains and valleys so deep
Polly mistrusted and then began to weep
Hey Willie oh Willie I'm afraid to of your ways
Willie Little Willie I'm afraid of your ways
The way you've been rambling you'll lead me astray
Oh Polly Pretty Polly your guess is about right
Polly Pretty Polly your guess is about right
I dug on your grave the biggest part of last night
And he led her a little farther and what did she spy
Led her a little farther and what did she spy
A new dug grave with a spade lying by
And she knelt down before him a pleading for her life
She knelt before him a pleading for her life
Let me be a single girl if I can't be your wife
Now Polly Pretty Polly that never can be
Polly Pretty Polly that never can be
Your past recitation's been trouble to me
And he opened up her bosom as white as any snow
He opened up her bosom as white as any snow
He stabbed her in the heart and blood began to flow
Then he went down to the jailhouse and what did he say
He went down to the jailhouse and what did he say
I've killed Pretty Polly and trying to get away
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“Pretty Polly” is the American descendant of an English broadside ballad, “The Gosport Tragedy,” and folk-song indexes file the whole family under Roud 15 and Laws P36. Several broadside copies of “The Gosport Tragedy” survive. It is a long piece in rhymed couplets about a ship’s carpenter who promises to marry a young woman, murders her when she is pregnant, and goes to sea, where her ghost confronts him. The scholar D.C. Fowler argued that the story may rest on real events of 1726 aboard HMS Bedford, whose carpenter, John Billson, died at sea that September. In the nineteenth century, shorter broadsides spread the story under titles such as “The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter,” “Love and Murder” and “Polly’s Love.”
The American “Pretty Polly” is much shorter. The Ballad Index dates it in print to 1856 and finds it across Appalachia, the South, the Midwest and Canada. The ghost has gone, and so, in most versions, has any reason for the killing. Willie urges Polly to ride away with him before they marry; she says she is afraid of his ways but goes anyway, and the trail ends at a grave already dug for her. She begs to be spared, and he stabs her. American versions often end with the killer turning himself in rather than haunted, and in the version Ralph Stanley sang, Willie walks to the jailhouse and confesses.
The ballad was a banjo song by the time it was first recorded. John Hammond recorded “Purty Polly” in the mid-1920s. B. F. Shelton recorded it in Bristol, Tennessee, on 29 July 1927 (Victor 35838), and Dock Boggs recorded it for Brunswick the same year. The Ballad Index suggests that many if not most later American versions trace back to Shelton’s record. The Coon Creek Girls recorded it in 1938 for a 1939 Vocalion release. Woody Guthrie set “Pastures of Plenty” to its tune, and Bob Dylan built “Ballad of Hollis Brown” on it.
The Stanley Brothers recorded “Pretty Polly” for Columbia at Castle Studio in Nashville on 3 November 1950, with Ralph Stanley singing lead and playing banjo, Carter Stanley on guitar, Pee Wee Lambert on mandolin, Les Woodie on fiddle and Ernie Newton on bass. Columbia issued it on 18 December 1950 (20770), backed with “Hey! Hey! Hey!,” with the composer credit given to B. F. Shelton. Ralph Stanley recorded it again with the Clinch Mountain Boys on 31 August 1971 in Clinton, Maryland, with Roy Lee Centers on guitar, Curly Ray Cline on fiddle and Jack Cooke on bass, for the Rebel LP Play Requests (1972).
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