The oldest known copy of this piece is found in Wit Restor'd, (1658,) p. 174, and from the reprint of that publication we have taken it, (p. 293.) Dryden seems to have adopted it from the same source into his Miscellanies, and Ritson has inserted Dryden's version in Ancient Songs and Ballads, ii. 116. Percy's copy (Reliques, iii. 106,) was inferior to the one here used, and was besides somewhat altered by the editor.
A Scottish version, furnished by Jamieson, is given in the Appendix to this volume, and another, extend
ing to forty-eight stanzas, in Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, Percy Society, vol. xvii. p. 21.
Similar incidents, with a verbal coincidence in one stanza, occur in the ballad immediately succeeding the present.
As it fell one holy-day, hay downe,
As manybe in the yeare,
When young men and maids together did goe,
Their mattins and masse to heare,
Little Musgrave came to the church dore,5
The preist was at private masse;
But he had more minde of the faire women,
Then he had of our [ladys] grace.
The one of them was clad in green,
Another was clad in [pall;]10
And then came in my lord [Barnards] wife,
The fairest amonst them all.
She cast an eye on little Musgrave,
As bright as the summer sun,
And then bethought this little Musgrave,15
"This ladys heart have I woonn."
Quoth she, "I have loved thee, little Musgrave,
Full long and many a day:"
"So have I loved you, fair lady,
Yet never word durst I say."20