Pretty Polly

And maybe that's a, you know, it becomes a plenty of murder ballads.

I mean, Pretty Polly and songs like that.

Maybe it becomes just another murder ballad in a way.

Although there is, I looked through Bronson and there's still a lot of mention of Jews in the, in the different versions, but it's, Yeah, certainly it's a gypsy lady in the Nelson Highlands.

All right, our next set takes us back several centuries.

Across the Atlantic and into the darker corners of traditional folk music, Knoxville Girl traces its ancestry to the English murder ballad, The Berkshire Tragedy.

which traveled through Ireland as the Wexford Girl before finding a new home in the American South.

The names and places changed along the way, but the chilling story survived, passed from singer to singer and generation to generation.

Brother harmonies make the brutality of the story all the more unsettling.

By the time the song reached American country music, its older European settings and details had been replaced by a distinctly American landscape.

And we open with Arthur Tanner and his Corn Shuckers and their 1925 recording of Knoxville Girl, one of a family of murder ballads that traveled across the Atlantic, becoming a fixture in storied Appalachian lore.

Hey, we do this Deeper Roots thing each and every week at the same time here on this station.

He actually continued to bounce in and out of jail and had several brushes with the law and died in 1927 at the age of 42.

Number nine, the Gosport tragedy, also known as Pretty Polly.

The author was unknown, but it was first recorded under the title Pretty Polly in 1925 by John Hammond.

But this one actually goes back all the way to 1760 or 1765.

Love and Murder, Cruel Ship's Carpenter, Polly's Love, Nancy's Ghost, Ghost Song, Molly the Betrayed, Fogbound Vessel, Pretty Polly, Purdy Polly.

You can take your pick.

I'm sure there's tons more titles that this song actually goes by.