Pretty Polly
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-04-15

Day 30 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series  (folksongindex.com)

As I've worked through the approximately 300 plus songs in Carl Sandburg's 1927 American Songbag, there are 30 or so that I consider problems, musically and/or lyrically. Pretty Polly is the first one if you start from the beginning. I could skip it, and others, but I'll give it a go.

The problem with Pretty Polly is that, if I understand my music theory, it is modal, not tonal. The easiest way to explain it is that you really can't play it with major or minor chords. It's more like singing a Gregorian chant, with no accompaniment.

Sandburg wrote, "Murder is evil but what shall we say of six murders of young women for the sake of their "costly  clothing "? We are told here and in ancient Scandinavian ballads of a man who drowned six women.  But the seventh and last of his brides foiled him and sent him to his death. With all her strength  she "pushed him into the sea" and that was his end.

"The piece is an ancient one, a Scottish text  of it, "May Colvin," appearing in David Herd's collection published in 1776. In English ballad  books and broadsides it has been variously titled "The Old Beau," "The Outlandish Knight,"  "False Sir John," and "May Colleen." It is heard in variants in nearly all the Appalachian regions.

This version is from the R W. Gordon collection."

Many hypotheses have been offered as to the origin of this ballad. . . . The most widely known is Bugge's theory (Sophus Bugge - an interesting character) that this is a corrupt form of the tale of Judith, found in the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books of the Bible.

It should be noted, however, that the only actual parallel between Judith and Lady Isabel is that both end with the bad guy being killed by the heroine.