A copy of this ballad in Dryden's Miscellany, III, 312, 1716, agrees with the one in Wit and Drollery. That in Ritson's Select Collection of English Songs, II, 215, 1783, agrees with Dryden's save in two or three words. The broadside C a was printed for Henry Gosson, who is said by Chappell to have published from 1607 to 1641. If the lower limit be correct, this is the earliest impression known.[foot-note] The other broadsides, C b-e, are later, but all of the seventeenth century. Percy inserted the ballad in his Reliques, III, 67, 1765, making a broadside in the British Museum his basis, and correcting as usual.
Percy remarks: This ballad is ancient, and has been popular; we find it quoted in many old plays. Cases cited by him are: Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, V, 3, Dyce II, 223, of about 1611:
Again, Sir William Davenant's play 'The Wits,' where Sir Thwack boasts, "I sing Musgrove, and for the Chevy Chase no lark comes near me," Act III, p. 194, of ed. 1672; and 'The Varietie,' a comedy, Act IV, 1649. In Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Bonduca,' V, 2, Dyce, V, 88, dating before March, 1619, we find this stanza, which is perhaps A 26, loosely remembered:
And two stanzas in Fletcher's 'Monsieur Thomas,' IV, 11, Dyce VII, 375, earlier than 1639, may well be A 11, 12 parodied:
Jamieson says, in a prefatory note to F, that he had heard 'Little Musgrave' repeated, with very little variation, both in Morayshire and the southern counties of Scotland. All the Scottish versions are late, and to all seeming derived, indirectly or immediately, from print,[foot-note] As a recompense we have a fine ballad upon the same theme, 'The Bonny Birdy,' which is not represented in England.
In the English broadside and most of the northern versions the lovers try a bribe, a threat, or both, to make the page keep counsel. In some of these Musgrave, when detected, ejaculates a craven imprecation of woe to the fair woman that lies in his arms asleep, G 23, H 16, I 14, J 20, L 37. In I the men are brothers; in E, F Musgrave has a wife of his own; in C, G Lord Barnard kills himself; in B he is hanged! None of these divergences from the story as we have it in A are improvements, but it is an improvement that the lady should die by stroke of steel as in C, E, H, J, K, L, in exchange for the barbarity of A. The penance in L is a natural and common way of ending such a tragedy. The collecting of the lady's heart's blood in a basin of pure silver, G 28-30, is probably borrowed from 'Lammikin,' where this trait is very effective.
The heathen child, B 131, is a child unchristened. An unbaptized child seems still to be called so in Norway, and so is a woman between childbirth and churching. In modern Icelandic usage a boy or girl before confirmation is called heathen, from confusion between baptism and confirmation: Ivar Aasen, at the word heiden; Vigfusson, at the word heiðinn.[foot-note]
explains a corruption in E 182, where the manuscript reads, He 's struck her in the straw, and another in J 9. The sword is wiped or whetted on straw in 'Clerk Saunders,' A 15, C 13, D 8, G 17; 'Willie and Lady Maisry,' B 19; 'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet,' B 36; 'Lady Diamond,' Buchan, II, 206, st. 8. Child Maurice dries his sword on the grass, John Steward dries his on his sleeve, A 27, 28; Glasgerion dries his sword on his sleeve, A 22; Horn wipes his sword on his arm, King Horn, ed. Wissmann, 622 f.
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