The Silk Merchant's Daughter at the Bodleian Library (http://erl.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/acwwweng/ballads/image.pl?ref=Harding+B+11(3744)&id=04669.gif&seq=1&size=0)is the story of a ship that sank on the way to New England - leaving out all the Indian stuff entirely. But the end result is the same - they are going to have to to resort to cannibalism to survive - but just in time another ship arrives...

Most of the broadsides at Bodleian aren't dated as yet - this one isn't. It's printed by Harding and I don't know when Harding printed.. someone else here might (Bruce?)

It shows up in Sharp's Southern Appalachian book with Indians and he references the Folk Songs of Somerset No. 79 as a text without tune. I have a ton of other listings for it - mostly American sources though. The earliest in 1841 (Gardner & Chickering, Ballads & Songs of Southern Michigan pp.176-177). Unfortunately I don't have the texts so I can't say if any of these have Indians or not.

Is this at all interesting to catters? I love this sort of stuff!! I'll have to see if I can persuade a friend to make an midi arrangement of it - I'd love to put it on my page - I have several transvestites, but no would-be cannibals!