‘A grave to lay them in!
My lady shall lye on the sunny side,
Because of her noble kin.’
25
But O how sorry was that good lord,
For a’ his angry mood,
When he espy’d his ain young son
All weltering in his blood!
The following copy was kindly communicated to me by Mr David MacRitchie, Honorary Secretary of the Gypsy Lore Society, in advance of its publication in the Journal of the society. While it preserves the framework of the story, it differs very considerably in details from all the printed copies. It is evidently of the same origin as some of the Scottish versions (all of which seem to derive from print), though it has no marked resemblance to the actual form of any particular one of these. Some peculiarities are plausibly attributable to dim or imperfect recollection. Thus, the ball-play of D, E, etc., is turned into a ball. Lord Barnard is made a king, and the page the king’s brother (neither of which changes is an improvement). We may observe that in J Lord Barnabas is at the king’s court, and in I Sir Grove is Lord Bengwill’s brother; but these points are not decisive, and the changes may be purely arbitrary. 4 shows traces of E 5 and F 3; 8 may have been suggested by something like G 4; and the last line of 14 looks like a corruption of G 29. This involves the supposition that the source of the ballad was a version somewhat different from any hitherto recovered; but ‘Little Musgrave’ is one of the best known of all ballads, and the variants must have been innumerable. On the whole, 1–8, 14, present a free treatment of ill-remembered matter; 9–13 are fairly well preserved; compare E 13–17.