The subject of this ballad is sufficiently popular from the modern play which is founded upon it. This was written by George Lillo, a jeweller of London, and first acted about 1730.—As for the ballad it was printed at least as early as the middle of the last century.
It is here given from three old printed copies, which exhibit a strange intermixture of Roman and black letter. It is also collated with another copy in the Ashmole Collection at Oxford, which is thus intitled, "An excellent ballad of George Barnwell, an apprentice of London, who ... thrice robbed his master and murdered his uncle in Ludlow." The tune is The Merchant.
This tragical narrative seems to relate a real fact; but when it happened I have not been able to discover.
[Ritson writes as follows concerning certain improvements made by Percy in the following ballad (Ancient Songs, 1829, vol. ii. p. 165, note):—"Throughout this 'second part' (except in a single instance) the metre of the first line of each stanza is in the old editions lengthened by a couple of syllables, which are, occasionally at least, a manifest interpolation. The person also is for the most part changed from the first to the third, with evident impropriety. Dr. Percy has very ingeniously restored the measure by ejecting the superfluous syllables, and given consistency to the whole by the restoration of the proper person; and as it is now highly improbable that any further ancient copy will be found, and those which exist are manifestly corrupt, it seemed justifiable to adopt the judicious emendations of this ingenious editor."
Dr. Rimbault observes, "This curious tune (The Merchant) which has been quite overlooked by antiquaries, is found, together with the original ballad, The Merchant and the Fiddler's Wife, in D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. v. p. 77, edit. 1719."
The former great popularity of the story of the wicked young prentice is shown by James Smith's parody in the Rejected Addresses and Thackeray's caricature romance—George de Barnwell.]