The 'Hunttis of Chevet' is among the "sangis of natural music of the antiquite" mentioned as sung by the "shepherds" in The Complaynte of Scotlande, 1549. It was an old and a popular song at the middle of the sixteenth century. A, the copy in the Ashmolean manuscript, is subscribed 'Expliceth, quod Rychard Sheale,' upon which ground Sheale has been held to be the author, and not, as Percy and Ritson assumed, simply the transcriber, of the ballad. Sheale describes himself as a minstrel living at Tamworth, whose business was to 'sing and talk,' or to chant ballads and tell stories. He was the author of four pieces of verse in the same manuscript, one of which is of the date 1559. This and another piece, in which he tells how he was robbed of above threescore pound, give a sufficient idea of his dialect and style and a measure of his ability. This ballad was of course part of his stock as minstrel; the supposition that he was the author is preposterous in the extreme.
'The Battle of Otterburn' (No, 161) and 'The Hunting of the Cheviot' appear to be founded upon the same occurrence, 'The Hunting of the Cheviot' being the later of the two, and following in part its own tradition, though repeating some portions of the older ballad. The grammatical forms of A are, however, earlier than those of the particular copy of 'The Battle of Otterburn' which has been preserved. Sidney's well-known words may apply either to 'Otterburn' or to the present ballad: "Certainly I must confesse my own barbarousnes, I never heard the olde song of Percy and Duglas, that I found not my heart mooued more then with a Trumpet," etc. (Apologie for Poetrie, ed. Arber, p. 46).
B is a striking but by no means a solitary example of the impairment which an old ballad would suffer when written over for the broadside press. This very seriously enfeebled edition was in circulation throughout the seventeenth century, and much sung (says Chappell) despite its length. It is declared by Addison, in his appreciative and tasteful critique (Spectator, Nos. 70, 74, 1711), to be the favorite ballad of the common people of England. Addison, who knew no other version, informs us that Ben Jonson used to say that he had rather have been the author of Chevy Chase than of all his works. The broadside copy may possibly have been the only one known to Jonson also, but in all probability the traditional ballad was still sung in the streets in Jonson's youth, if not later.
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