Note 1 — CASE OF WILLIAM KIDD. (continued 2)

Of this ballad, contemporary with Kidd's execution, there is a unique copy in the famous collection of pamphlets belonging to the Earl of Crawford, from which it is reprinted in Professor Firth's Naval Songs and Ballads, pp. 134-37, published by the Navy Records Society. By oral transmission it had wide currency in New England. There are bits of it in Palfrey, New England, IV. 185, and in Watson's Annals of Philadelphia, ed. 1830, p. 464; and the editor remembers hearing his Salem grandmother sing parts of it. Professor George L. Kittredge says that the Harvard College Library has a broadside of this American version, printed in Boston about 1810-1820, which, with some differences in the order of stanzas, is printed in Dr. E.E. Hale's New England History in Ballads, pp. 40-46. The original version, which we print, purports to be written between sentence and execution, May 9-23, 1701, and follows closely the chief incidents brought out in the trials, and in the documents which precede.