THE SWEET TRINITY
The Text is taken from a broadside in the Pepys collection (iv. 196), which can be dated between 1682 and 1685, and is entitled Sir Walter Raleigh sailing in the Low-lands. Three other copies of the same edition of the broadside are known.
The Story of the Sweet Trinity has become confused with that of the Golden Vanity (Golden Victorie, Golden Trinitie, Gold Pinnatree are variants), which is probably a corrupted form of it; indeed the weak ending of the broadside challenges any singer to improve upon it. But again there are two distinct variations of the Golden Vanity ballad. In the first class, the boy, having sunk the French galley, calls to the Golden Vanity to throw him a rope, and when it is refused, threatens to sink her too; whereupon they take him aboard and carry out all their promises of reward (which vary considerably in the different versions). In the second class, the boy dies after he is taken up from the water; in one version he sinks from exhaustion before he can be saved.
The Sweet Trinity, however, has been taken by a ship of unspecified nationality (‘false’ might easily become corrupted into ‘French’); and thus this ballad deals with three ships, while the Golden Vanity versions mention but two. The latter are still current in folk-song.