Matty Groves
"Matty Groves", also known as "Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard" or "Little Musgrave", is a ballad probably originating in Northern England that describes an adulterous tryst between a young man and a noblewoman that is ended when the woman's husband discovers and kills them. It is listed as Child ballad number 81 and number 52 in the Roud Folk Song Index. This song exists in many textual variants and has several variant names. The song dates to at least 1613, and under the title Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard is one of the Child ballads collected by 19th-century American scholar Francis James Child.
| Matty Groves | |
|---|---|
| English folk song | |
"A lamentable ballad of the little Musgrove". A seventeenth-century broadside held in the Bodleian Library. | |
| Catalogue | Child Ballad 81 Roud Folk Song Index 52 |
| Genre | Ballad |
| Language | English |
| Performed | First attested in writing in 1613 |
| Published | Earliest surviving broadside dated to before 1675 |
| Also known by several other names | |
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