I've been through the Sharp versions pretty thoroughly now. After eliminating one that doesn't look like our song, I have 34 versions mostly from Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia, with one each from Tennessee and West Virginia.

There are very distinct regional differences in the way the song was sung. The one known in bluegrass circles as 'Pretty Polly', i.e. the shortened version with stanzas including a repeated first line (mainly twelve-bar AAB but sometimes 16-bar AAAB) is overwhelmingly associated with Kentucky. Some were notated by Sharp in 2/2 and 4/4, some in 3/4. None of the NC examples show that pattern, and nor does Jeff Stockton's from just across the Tennessee line.

The NC versions are almost all in triple time, usually with gapped scales containing a flattened third (i.e. Dorian-ish). There is a recognizable group with melodies resembling that of Mrs Tom Rice (Sharp's A version in EFSSA), examples of which turn up in KY and VA as well as NC. For example, Sharp C (Hilliard Smith) is clearly related to the Rice version both textually and melodically (Mr. Smith, incidentally, was not only a Trustee of Hindman college but also a US senator, no hillbilly he). Then there's a second, smaller group with a modal tune that's related to the Rice one. It's possible to see how the 'bluegrass PP' melody might be related in turn to these. All the NC versions but one have 16 bar stanzas following an ABCD text pattern; none has a first-line repeat.

There's also a very disparate category of 8 assorted major / Ionian tunes that don't hang together as a group. Amongst these are two very similar versions from the same part of VA, which appear from their first lines to be survivals of the 'Gosport Tragedy' – unfortunately Sharp and Karpeles didn't notate the words for these, or most of the other variants – and the Jeff Stockton broadside-based version, which is set to a tune unlike all the others. Some of these 'one-off' tunes may be borrowed from different songs, in one case clearly 'Jack O' Diamonds'.

Looking at all of that I'd say that the NC versions represent the older strain. The 12-bar type appears to have been sweeping Kentucky 100 years ago, though the older type was still hanging on there. Interestingly, a lot of those 12-bar versions came from students at Berea, Hindman and Oneida colleges. Was this the hit version of the day that appealed to the kids?

That the earliest commercial recordings of 'Pretty Polly' were by John Hammond and B F Shelton, both from Kentucky, comes as no surprise.

I'm still interested in where those recurring lines about 'gores of blood' and the 'debt to the Devil' came from. I agree that some of those verses about the ship sinking are reminiscent of 'House Carpenter', but I don't know a version of that with a debt to the Devil. Is there a missing print copy that included those stanzas?