Page:Popular Music of the Olden Time, Volume 1.pdf/204



This ballad is quoted in Fletcher’s Knight of the Burning Pestle, and Monsieur Thomas; in The Varietie, 1649; and in Davenant’s The Wits, where Twack, an antiquated beau, boasting of his qualifications, says—

A copy of the ballad is in the Bagford Collection, entitled “A lamentable ballad of Little Musgrove and the Lady Barnet, to an excellent new tune.” It is also in Wit restored, 1658; in Dryden’s Miscellany Poems, iii. 312 (1716); and in Percy’s Reliques, series 3, book i.

The tune is the usual traditional version.