"Limber and sound! besides I sing Musgrave,
And for Chevy-chace no lark comes near me."
In the Pepys Collection, vol. iii. p. 314, is an imitation of this old song, in 33 stanzas, by a more modern pen, with many alterations, but evidently for the worse.
This is given from an old printed copy in the British Museum, with corrections; some of which are from a fragment in the Editor's folio MS. It is also printed in Dryden's Collection of Miscellaneous Poems.
[The copy of this ballad in the Folio MS. (ed. Hales and Furnivall, vol. i. p. 119) is a mutilated fragment consisting of only ten complete stanzas and three half ones. The oldest entire copy is to be found in Wit Restor'd, 1658, where it is called the old ballad of little Musgrave, which is given by Professor Child (English and Scottish Ballads, vol. ii. p. 15) in preference to Percy's. This version, not very exactly transcribed, is printed in Dryden's Miscellany Poems (1716, vol. iii. 312), and Ritson (Ancient Songs and Ballads, vol. ii. p. 116) copied it from thence. Ritson writes of one of Percy's statements above: "Dr. Percy indeed, by some mistake, gives it as from an old printed copy in the British Museum; observing that 'In the Pepys collection is an imitation of this old song in a different measure, by a more modern pen, with many alterations, but evidently for the worse.' It is very true, and not less so that the only copies in the museum (for there are two) are more recent impressions of this identical imitation."
It is the 14th stanza slightly altered which is quoted in the Knight of the Burning Pestle.
"And some they whistled, and some they sung,
Hey down down!
And some did loudly say
Ever as Lord Barnet's horn blew,
Away Musgrave, away."
There are several Scottish versions, in which the reciters have altered the locality. Jamieson has printed one which he calls Lord Barnaby (Popular Ballads and Songs, i. 170). He states that he had heard it repeated both in Morayshire and in the southern counties.
Motherwell gives the air in his Minstrelsy which he noted down from oral communication, and this verse—
"It fell upon a Martinmas time
When the nobles were a drinking wine,
That little Mushiegrove to the kirk he did go
For to see the ladies come in."