Pretty Polly (ballad)

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"Pretty Polly", "The Gosport Tragedy" or "The Cruel Ship's Carpenter" (Roud 15) is a traditional English-language folk song found both in the British Isles and in the Appalachian region of North America.

The song is a murder ballad, telling of a young woman lured into the forest where she is killed and buried in a shallow grave. Many variants of the story have the villain as a ship's carpenter who promises to marry Polly but murders her when she becomes pregnant. When he goes back to sea, he is haunted by her ghost, confesses to the murder, goes mad and dies.

Many artists have presented their own versions including Estil C. Ball, Judy Collins, The String Cheese Incident, Yonder Mountain String Band, Bert Jansch, Sandy Denny, Dock Boggs, B. F. Shelton and Davey Graham.

One of the versions is notably the musical basis for Ballad of Hollis Brown by Bob Dylan who played 'Pretty Polly' himself in his early years.

More recently, the song has been covered by London band Queen Adreena who covered it on their first album, Taxidermy.

Rock writer Greil Marcus theorises that Nirvana's "Polly" is a "descendant" of "Pretty Polly".

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