AC: I don't have access to the remainder of the notes.

Notes:
86. A Ship Came Sailing over the Sea. This curious song was obtained by the late Rev. S. M. Walker of Saint Enoder, Cornwall, from a very old man in his parish, and it was sent me by [...]

Miss Octavia L. Hoare. We heard the same from old Sally Satterley at Huckaby Bridge, Dartmoor. She was the daughter of an old crippled singing man on the moor. I have told the story of the way in which she, as a young bride with her husband, took possession of a house built all in one day, in my Dartmoor Idylls, "Jolly Lane Cott." Sally is now dead, and her house has been rebuilt and vulgarised. One verse, running –

"I put my finger into the bush
Thinking the sweetest rose to find,
I prickt my finger to the bone,
And yet I left the rose behind."

is found in "The Distressed Virgin," a ballad by Martin Parker, printed by J. Coles, 1646-74. Parker seems to have taken the lines into his ballad from one previously existing. Two of the stanzas, 3 and 6, occur in the Scottish song, "Wally, wally up the Bank," in "Orpheus Caledonicus," 1733, No.34; The stanzas 4 and 5 in the song in "The Scot's Musical Museum," 1787-1803, vi. p.582. In "The Wandering Lover's Garland," circ. 1730, are two of the verses worked into another ballad.
We took down the song a third time from William Nichols of Whitchurch, near Tavistock. It was a song of his grandmother's, who seventy years ago was hostess of the village inn.


There they are!
Cheers,
Robyn