Had an old copy of this still pretty and touching, but much disordered, ballad been saved, we should perhaps have had a story like this: Bonnie Annie, having stolen her father's gold and her mother's fee, and fled with her paramour, the ship in which she is sailing encounters a storm and cannot get on. Annie is seized with the pangs of travail, and deplores the absence of women. The sailors say there is somebody on board who is marked for death, or flying from a just doom. They cast lots, and the lot falls on Annie. Conscious only of her own guilt, she asks to be thrown overboard. Her paramour offers great sums to the crew to save her, but their efforts prove useless, and Annie again begs, or they now insist, that she shall be cast into the sea with her babe. This done, the ship is able to sail on; Annie floats to shore and is buried there.
If the narrative in Jonah, i, is the ultimate source of this and similar stories, it must be owned that the tradition has maintained its principal traits in this ballad remarkably well. Cf. also 'Brown Robyn's Confession' (No. 57).
This page most recently updated on 04-Dec-2010, 15:27:14. Return to main index
