Talk:Pretty Polly (ballad)

Hollis Brown
While "Pretty Polly" is certainly the source for the tune of "Hollis Brown", the lyrics have nothing to do with Polly and are clearly inspired by "The Murder of the Lawson Family". Not sure if this is worth mentioning in the article.

Steambadger 02:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Traditional Song
The article says it is found in the British Isles and the the Appalachian region of North America. The reference from Folkinfo says that it is "A wildly popular ballad in its day, found in tradition pretty much everywhere English is spoken." --HighKing (talk) 13:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)


 * i didn't actually revert your reversion. i just removed the template.  from your reversion summary, it seemed that you were reverting to get rid of that irish blog, which i agree is not a reliable source, hence i left it out.  the folkinfo reference says "Notes:Tune and verses 4, 5 and 8 (substantially) sung by George Dunn (1887-1975), Quarry Bank, staffordshire; collected by Roy Paler, 21.6.1971 (Folk Music Journal, 1973, p. 289). Remainder of text from a broadside printed by Bloomer of Birmingham. "  is this not evidence that it's found in the british isles?  i don't actually care too much about this, because i think that the level of citation in that sentence is too high for what seems to me to be a manifest fact, but it's not that important.  &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 14:04, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

p.s. how would you feel moving the citation to roud over to support the british isles part? roud has almost 400 versions of the song collected throughout the british isles, and supports the statement better than the folkinfo reference anyway. what i'm proposing would look like this (with munged ref tags so we can look at it):

"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.

&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 15:32, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi - the article says it is "found both in the British Isles and in the Appalachian region of North America" - but I'm not sure where this comes from or what references there are to support this. Roud doesn't mention these regions, so I'm unsure if there's some significance to them.  The 388 records that Roud collected shows it can be found in USA (Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Utah, Tennessee, Florida, Michigan, N. Carolina, Maryland, Maine, Oklahoma, Ohio, Arkansas, New York), Canada, England, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, and Scotland.  But the vast majority of records are just for England, USA and Canada.  In my opinion, the article should reflect the fact that it is a traditional English song with origins in England (ref: Roud - and which isn't even mentioned in the article), and that it was a wildly popular song in its time, and has spread to pretty much everywhere that English is spoken (as per folkinfo ref).  --HighKing (talk) 16:37, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * ok, my feeling is that the phrase "appalachian region" is a reasonable summary of this listing of states there, although it doesn't include all of them, it's true. what exactly would be your ideal version of this lead sentence?  i'm not too picky about it, i just think it's a bad idea to have another citation needed tag hanging from the british isles statement.  either we can find one source that says that, or maybe we can rewrite it so that it's more accurate and sourceable to one source.  i think that the usa is important to mention, because the evolution of the ballad over 400 years in the usa has made it quite divergent from english, uk, british isles versions.  also the appalachian region is important, because i think roud (and other sources, produceable if necessary) shows that that's where the song attained its more or less stable version as pretty polly per se, but i'm not locked into this.  maybe you can propose a lead that you like? &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 16:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Hello Alf, the proposed lead will be minus the words "British Isles", but is the song found in the British Isles, i.e. England, Ireland etc.? I expect it is, so using that terminology is valid. There is no issue about whereever else the song is found. It is just that HighKing, rightly or wrongly, has a problem with "British Isles". I mention this because I wouldn't like to see you get involved in a protracted debate without realising what the underlying issue is actually about. Van Speijk (talk) 17:08, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * ok, thanks for your concern. i won't actually allow myself to be drawn into a debate like that, which i don't understand anyway, since i'm just interested in the ordinary editing of this article, which i do understand.  as long as we can get an accurate list of where the song is found i'll be happy, regardless of the terminology used.  thus my invitation to HighKing to produce a proposal acceptable to him/her.  maybe you have a proposal?  it just seems useless to have a citation needed tag on something which is already well supported.  maybe just a rewrite of the sentence is all it will take.  &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 17:28, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not really qualified to comment on the subject matter here, but as a reader of the article, the present lead sentence is good enough. It succinctly introduces the subject and as far as I know it is accurate. I would simply leave it and remove the tags. The present references support the statements. Van Speijk (talk) 17:36, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Alf, there's three points I'm making, and seeking clarification on. You're the subject expert so you might be in the best situation to decide if the points are worthy or immaterial:
 * The article makes no mention of the fact that this song originated in England and traveled from there to other regions - this appears to be supported by refs
 * If we're using Roud to support "Appalachian", what about all the areas that aren't in the appalachian region that Roud may have collected a song from? Also, what about Canada?  Is this a matter of weighting?
 * We are potentially introducing original research if we conclude that because a song was collected from a singer who sang in that region, that the song itself is "found" in that region - it may be that the singer added it to their repertoire from a different region. Also - applying weighting again - what if (in this example) out of 388 records, there is a single record for (let's say) Australia.  Would we also say the song is "found" in Australia?
 * Finally - is the article trying to describe the origins of the song, or where the song is currently found and sang today? I'm not clear on that.  --HighKing (talk) 07:05, 13 September 2011 (UTC)


 * "found in" means "collected in by a folklorist". no one knows where folk songs originated, and folklorists don't tend to talk as if they do know.  they only know what the distribution of the song was around the time that broadsides became popular.  if you want to list every place that roud says it was collected in, that's fine with me, although i don't think that information of that specificity belongs in the lead sentence.  also, to use roud to cite the lead sentence to does not say that the lead sentence contains every location that's in roud, it merely says that roud contains every location that's in the lead sentence.  if you'd be happier, we could add the phrase "among other places" to it, and then if you want to go through all the records of roud and list all the places, even down to the county level, where the song was collected, and put that information in the body of the article, i'd have no objection whatsoever.  how does that sound? &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 14:58, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * p.s. it's not trying to describe either the origins or where it's sung today. it's trying to describe where it was collected by folklorists.  this is the only way to have reliable sources for statements about folksongs. &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 14:59, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation - all sounds reasonable. Looking through where the records were collected, I'd say that Canada should also be specifically mentioned - what do you think?  I also think that it's a stretch to use "British Isles" as practically all the records are for England and Scotland, but I've no objection either way if you think it's supported and it's common terminology among folklorists.  --HighKing (talk) 00:56, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * yeah, i noticed a lot of canada mentions in there too, so let's throw that in. i'll look through all of them and see what i think about british isles vs. england and scotland.  being american, i don't think i understand the subtleties.  british isles would be if it included man, jersey, etc.?  ireland's an island, but mostly not british, n'est ce pas? &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 01:56, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * after reading British Isles, i decided it'd be better just to list the main countries. i hope this is ok with you.  i don't think it's worth listing every u.s. state, since they are more than predominately in appalachia. &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 02:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but it's just not good enough replacing a succict description like "British Isles" with a verbose list of constituent countries, just to support a minority view. I'll replace the original terminology, use of which is entirely valid. Van Speijk (talk) 09:35, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * i'm happy with this version too. please don't, though, attribute motives to me for which you have no evidence.  i didn't say why i listed the countries, only that i did so after reading the article. i didn't do it to support or attack any viewpoint whatsoever, because i really don't know what the argument is, ok?  all i wanted to do was to get rid of all the citations for something which is essentially obvious anyway.  you and Highking can have it out over british isles vs. whatever indefinitely, but thank you for just keeping the single citation to roud, which is enough. &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 13:56, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry if it appeared I was criticising you, I wasn't. Thanks for being understanding about the whole sordid British Isles issue. Van Speijk (talk) 17:12, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * ok, thanks! i'm sorry if i sounded overly offended. anyway, i'm happy with it, and we'll see what happens! &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 17:18, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

list of artists who have covered the song
i hope my changes to the way the list is organized are agreeable. i would like to propose something slightly more radical, but will leave this here for a while to see what others think. instead of letting this list grow until it has everyone who's ever covered this song, i'd like to restrict it to notable versions of the song. that is, more than just a notable artist having covered the song (i could add 20 more right now without googling) i think it'd be more informative about the song to only have covering artists who have been mentioned in reliable sources as having covered it with some reason being given why the cover is important. for most of the artists on the list, the fact that they covered this song adds absolutely nothing to anyone's understanding of the song itself.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 03:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Surely the best criterion for inclusion is that the artist has a Wikipedia article for cross-reference.DavidCrosbie (talk) 16:47, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd like to suggest that notability extends to traditional singers from whom versions of a song have been collected. This is particularly important in the UK, where there is little history of recording traditional singers for popular release. Recordings by traditional singers have influenced the versions sung by people like Mike Waterson. Joe Fogey (talk) 12:43, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

"Polly Gosford" by the Body and BIG|BRAVE
Thoughts on including this recent re-imagining of the traditional version into this article? 64.223.105.203 (talk) 17:22, 22 February 2022 (UTC)