+The Text+ is from Kinloch's MSS., 'from the recitation of T. Kinnear,
Stonehaven.' Child remarks of it that 'probably by the fortunate
accident of being a fragment' it 'leaves us to put our own construction
upon the weird seaman; and, though it retains the homely ship-carpenter,
is on the whole the most satisfactory of all the versions.'
+The Story+ is told more elaborately in a broadside, and resembles
_Enoch Arden_ in a certain degree. James Harris, a seaman, plighted to
Jane Reynolds, was captured by a press-gang, taken overseas, and, after
three years, reported dead and buried in a foreign land. After a
respectable interval, a ship-carpenter came to Jane Reynolds, and
eventually wedded her, and the loving couple had three pretty children.
One night, however, the ship-carpenter being on a three days' journey,
a spirit came to the window, and said that his name was James Harris,
and that he had come to take her away as his wife. She explains that she
is married, and would not have her husband know of this visit for five
hundred pounds. James Harris, however, said he had seven ships upon the
sea; and when she heard these 'fair tales,' she succumbed, went away
with him, and 'was never seen no more.' The ship-carpenter on his return
hanged himself.
Scott's ballad in the _Minstrelsy_ spoils its own effect by converting
the spirit into the devil. An American version of 1858 tells the tale of
a 'house-carpenter' and his wife, and alters 'the banks of Italy' to
'the banks of old Tennessee.'