Songs of the People has a song called Polly Primrose, where a man's girlfriend drowns and he dreams she's been turned into a mermaid. It's an modified (and shifted to Ireland) version of a song called I Wish I Was A Fish; Or Sweet Polly Primrose by G.W.Hunt.

In the original the last 2 verses are:

I had a dream last night that I
Was down below the wave,
And there I saw my Polly
In a gorgeous coral cave;
She'd changed into a mermaid,
And she'd such a splendid tail,
She was doing double shuffles,
In conjunction with a whale.

While she's a sportive mermaid,
I'm so wretched here above
So I think I'll take a plunge and be
A merman with my love;
But the precise locality,
I don't exactly know,
Where I may find my Polly
So perhaps I'd best not go.



Mick