This is Part 1 of a three part series.  See also Part 2, and Part 3.

Introduction – “Twas on the high, high holy day…”

This week we go back to Britain, to the old ballads.  Yes, it’s one of *those* songs;  “Jerry Springer meets Days of Our Lives” in merry old England.  In America we usually call this one “Matty Groves”, or “Mathie Grove”, or “Little Mattie Groves.”  But what’s in a name?  If you get Veronese’s Infidelity, you’ll get the song; or, you’ll get the gist minus the bloody swords at least.

But, how about we start with the music first – eh?  Doc Watson practices this medicine.

“Matty Groves” – Doc Watson (Spotify)           Lyrics for Doc’s version

Doc nails it as usual and, despite the ‘naked man’ in verse 13, delivers a shorter ‘safe for work and kids‘ version compared to others. Yes, even at six minutes Doc is brief.  One linked below has 26 verses and clocks in at over twelve! We’ll get to that soon enough, but let’s step off now into the academic facts.

Francis Child wrote about this ballad in the 1880’s as #81, identified it by its older name of “Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard“ and collected fifteen versions.

The Roud Folksong Index today identifies it as #52, and catalogs over 300 citations.

Leaving aside the inevitable variation in proper names and such, over time and geography the narrative stays remarkably consistent.  A seduction occurs in the absence of a lord.  He is tipped off and eventually confronts his lady in bed with a lesser gentleman, whom he then kills in a fair fight.  Then he murders his lady.  This Wikipedia link gives a straightforward summary.

“What news, what news?”

Of course there’s much more; otherwise this ballad would not have survived as long or spread as far as it has.  It’s known from Scotland to Jamaica!  (In some Jamaican versions, as in “Young Hunting“, a little parrot plays witness.)  It’s not as old as “Two Sisters“, but it’s referenced in print as early as 1613 (some sources say 1611) and all but certainly has roots that go deeper into the previous century.

Does it tell a true story, or is it the figment of a violent imagination?  Waltz and Engle in their entry for the Traditional Ballad Index cite an interesting ‘educated guess’  by Simon Fury.  (Remember the older name of the song is “Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard.”)  I’ve added hyperlinks to enrich Mr. Fury’s comment.

“I think it likely that the idea of ‘Little Musgrave’ as being a small person is just a mis-association of part of a place name to a personal attibute. Little Musgrave and Great Musgrave both still exist in Cumbria, in what used to be Westmorland… and are about 20 miles from Barnard Castle in County Durham. So what we have in the song (in my humble opinion) is a simple bit of hanky-panky between the wife of the lord of Barnard Castle (the ancient seat of the de Balliol family) and a landowner in Little Musgrave. In other words, the standard stuff of border ballad plots.”

We know it’s from Shakespeare’s England, or perhaps his mother’s or grandmother’s time (maybe even written when Veronese was painting Infidelity in Prague!)  Did it start then as Fury suggests? Is this some bard’s telling of the news from the lawless borderlands, the mostly true story of a tryst among the gentry that went terribly afoul?  Quite possibly.

Does it matter?  Well, yes and no.  If you’ve got ten (ok, twelve) minutes to ponder, then listen to this beautiful, more violent American version.  Or start it and read the lyrics if you’re in a hurry!

“Little Musgrave” – Jean Ritchie (Spotify)     Lyrics for Jean’s version

 

Of course the history matters. We know this ballad because English women and men who populated the American colonies passed it on to their descendants as they moved west. Jean Ritchie’s Kentucky roots provide obvious evidence. In my next post called “A Bower in Bucklesfordbury“ later this week, I will deal with the ‘English-ness’ of the ballad; with the part that matters historically and can help us understand whence we Americans came and from whom we severed ties. (Why *would* you insist that the naked man in bed with your wife put on his clothes before you kill him, for example? What would Clint Eastwood have done?)

But then again, no; the history doesn’t matter at all.  Like a samurai’s scowl, there’s something more deeply human here. Now, I don’t mean to suggest with such imagery that it’s limited to the male perspective on infidelity.  The faithful transmission of the core narrative speaks to something that’s appealed to both genders for perhaps half a millennium.

We need not agree on who is the protagonist to find meaning.  Neither must we understand the ins and outs of gentility in Elizabethan England to relate.   I’ll try to wrestle all that down in my last post this week – “God Make You Safe and Free.”  (There we’ll see some amazing ‘rationalization’ as Nic Jones fixes wonderful, delicate new music to old lyrics that favor the lady and Musgrave, and Planxty borrows his tune for yet a different set of lines and gives a performance that brings this song truly alive in this century.)

Coda – “I better get up and go…”

For today, let’s end with some other music to round out our introduction.

While neither Watson’s nor Ritchie’s versions make it clear, this song is often associated with the more famous (and non-violent) “Shady Grove“ in America.  Presumably the tune for “Shady Grove” came from this or a similar variant of Child 81, but I don’t propose to prove that case here.  Let’s just listen to it!  (Oh, and if you can play “Shady Grove”, you’ll see that you can now easily add one more song to your repertoire!)

Fairport Convention’s ‘folk rock’ version from 1969 is seminal, not delicate, and for reasons more than these *well* worth a listen.  Like Ritchie’s, it exceeds Doc’s version in violence.

Matty Groves – Fairport Convention (Spotify)       Lyrics for Fairport Convention’s version

For those of you who want a little more electric guitar than the classic recording from Liege and Lief  I linked from Spotify, check out this performance from Finland in 1971.