The Ballad of Captain Kidd

Abstract

THE NEW YORK sea captain and pirate, William Kidd, was hanged at Execution Dock, London, at low tide on the afternoon of May 23, I70I. The proceedings against him had been long and notorious. The actions for which he was tried had been still more notorious-one involving murder and five, piracy. His career had been brief, brilliant in the beginning and catastrophic at the end. The general excitement at the time of his execution and all during his imprisonment in London had been at fever pitch. Gossip went to work, and the wildest tales of Kidd's wickedness and wealth were believed. Kidd was exhibited, as was the custom, for a fee while he was still in prison. Upon his death, numerous both factual and fictitious appeared. There were at least five of the trial proceedings. The articles of agreement between Captain Kidd and his Whig backers were reprinted in several forms. At least five broadsides appeared at the time of execution. Two were prepared by Paul Lorrain, the Newgate chaplain, featuring the behavior upon the scaffold of Kidd and of the seven other men executed with him. The chaplain naturally stressed the corruptness of Kidd, his defiant stubbornness, his drunken condition, and his spectacular second hanging necessitated by the breaking of the rope the first time. The three other broadsides were Captain Kid's Farewel to the Seas, a ballad; an Elegy on the Death of Capt. William Kidd in rough couplets; and a Dialogue Between the Ghost of Captain Kidd and the Napper in the Strand. Of all these, the ballad only was destined to live on. The accounts became matters of record and biography. The ballad flourished. It was so popular in the Colonies where Kidd had established his'home, and it was so changed through myriad renditions that it became a definite part of American balladry and folklore. It thus became one of America's first ballads, as the larger legend of his exploits may be considered our first folk legend. Captain Kidd had gone out from New York in I696 a privateer of high degree, bearing King William's own commission to take Captain Tew and certain other Madagascar pirates who were