Poll Of Itchen Ferry
Southampton In Song
The Songs
Poll Of Itchen Ferry
The oldest surviving song in our Southampton collection, it was discovered some years back in an 1824 book extravagantly titled 'The British Minstrel: A Collection of the Most Esteemed and popular English, Scottish and Irish Songs'. The writer is unknown; in the book it is stated simply as 'original'. It was later put to the tune of 'Polly and the Soldier' by Chris Mitchell.
Whether Poll ever existed we do not know - certainly we haven't been able to track her down in census records - but as she appears to have been 'a flighty young thing' maybe that's not surprising! Was she a Diaper, a Cozens or Jurd, or one of the other sea-faring Itchen Ferry families? If she was, she would have lived in a community of about 820, and her father would have been either a ferryman or a fisherman.
Her beauty was apparently such that she attracted suitors from all around Southampton and even "as far as Hamble" - all of 5 miles away!
The song is taken from the singing of Phil and Pip Lyons.
Brian Hooper
Jeff Henry