Ballad of Little Musgrave: Border Background

Like all the works in Child's 'border ballad' collection, number 81 - The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard - was written about families living in northernmost England and southernmost Scotland (blog post here).

Hadrian's Wall

The line that divided England and Scotland started as a wall.

Hadrian's Wall...was a defensive fortification in the Roman province of Britannia, begun in AD 122 in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. It ran from the banks of the River Tyne near the North Sea to the Solway Firth on the Irish Sea, and was the northern limit of the Roman Empire.-

Read more: Wikipedia

Hadrian's Wall

Cuthbert's Only Son: John Musgrove I

Cuthbert Musgrave and his son, John, are counted in the book Seventeenth Century Colonial Ancestors of Members of the National Society Colonial Dames XVII Century, page 180.

Musgrove, Cuthbert (c 1653-87) Md.: m. Dorothy ___   Landowner 

John Musgrove (1685-1746) Md.-Va. m. ___   Landowner

 

We blogged about it here. Cuthbert died in 1687, two years after John Musgrove I was born.

Cuthbert: Our First American Musgrove

Cuthbert Musgrave was born June 1, 1644, in Crookdake,  England, to William and Dorothy Musgrave. He was named after St. Cuthbert, who was...

 ...a monk, who grew in merit and in the intensity of his devotion. He was elected to the bishopric of the church of Lindisfarne. 

St Cuthbert b 634 - d 687

Ballad of Little Musgrave: Minstrels

The battle started with a song. In 1066, the first fatal blow struck in William the Conqueror's take-over of England was by a minstrel.

"At the Battle of Hastings, Taillefer sang the Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland ed.) at the English troops while juggling with his sword. An English soldier ran out to challenge him and was killed by Taillefer, who then charged the English lines and was engulfed." Wikipedia

He's mostly lost to history, but the song he sang that day formed British society. It was number one in England for centuries. And it was the fuel that sent the Ballad of Little Musgrave to the Blackfriar's Theater in 1607. The vehicle? Minstrels, all the way down.

Ballad of Little Musgrave: Story

The Ballad of Little Musgrave:

"...is a Border ballad probably originating in Northern England that describes an adulterous tryst between a man and a woman that is ended when the woman's husband discovers and kills them." Wikipedia

Barnard Castle, Durham, England

An 'educated guess,' from Simon Fury on the Traditional Ballad Index website.

"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 IMHO 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."

We think he's almost right. We'll explore the historical characters and setting of this story in this post.

Ballad of Little Musgrave: Author

We are working on the assumption that The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard was based on a historical event; first written in the reign of Henry VIII. It was changed in James I of England's reign. This post asks who was there to write the original version.

Little Musgrave

The Musgraves were,

"A powerful family of Cumberland who had a long record of service to the English Crown, both as soldiers and March officers. ...One of the two 'greatest names' of the West Wardenry (the other was Salkfield), the Musgraves were constantly at feud on the Scottish side, and had a three century vendetta with their fellow Cumbrians, the Dacres."

Steel Bonnets page 63 Kindle Unlimited 

That's not their only feud with fellow Englishmen.

Ballad of Little Musgrave: Origin

We're blogging on the border Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard. It's a song about a love triangle between a Lord, his Lady and Little Musgrave. It ends violently. The background for this post is the historical setting of and the earliest text for this ballad we've previously established.

Holy Day Gathering

Ballad of Little Musgrave: Text

Our family surname is derived from Musgrave. We've posted on The Ballad of Little Musgrave. We believe some event is the basis for this ballad.

Our last post, on the historical setting, dated the events to the reign of King Henry VIII and his Reformation; the move from a Catholic to a Protestant England. In this post, we'll attempt to uncover the original story.

Ballad of Little Musgrave: History

                       

1930s AAA road sign preserved
on display in the village

The Ballad of Little Musgrave, known in the USA as Matty Groves:

...is a Border ballad probably originating in Northern England that describes an adulterous tryst between a man and a woman that is ended when the woman's husband discovers and kills them. Wikipedia

Our Musgrove surname derives from Musgrave, a family from Great and Little Musgrave in Westmoreland - now incorporated by Cumbria -  on the English/Scottish border. More than just a great old ballad, this is part of our family's oral history. In this series of posts, we attempt to bring that perspective to the Ballad of Little Musgrave.

Ballad of Little Musgrave: Versions

Our Musgrove surname derives from the Musgraves of Cumbria, England. We've blogged about the 'Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard'; a tale of infidelity, passion, and murder.

 

'The Roud Folk Song Index contains over 300 instances of this ballad, and shows that the ballad has been collected mostly in North America: 113 versions listed in Roud were found in the USA, with the bulk in North Carolina (24), the Virginias (24), Kentucky (23), New England (16) and Tennessee (9). In Canada, 18 versions were found, the majority in Nova Scotia. Scotland produced 9 versions, and England; only 2.'  Wikipedia

In this post, we share a variety of musical versions of this song.

The Ballad of Little Musgrave

We've blogged about the Musgrave family's surname; their castles, their treasures and their legacy. We've explored their Border-Reiver heritage.

Ancient ruins and the Luck of Edenhall are the physical remains of the Musgrave clan. The Border-Reivers left their legacy on our language with the phrases 'Blackmail' and 'Red Handed.' But the real legacy of the border-reivers is their ballads.

This post is about The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard.

The Musgraves: Border Reiver Clan

What do Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Billy Graham, and Neil Armstrong - the first man on the moon - have in common with the Musgroves? We all come from families along the English/Scottish border. These clan members were known as Border-Reivers.

L to R: Lyndon Johnson,
Richard Nixon and Billy Graham

Musgrave: Distinguished Surname

Our name, Musgrove, was originally Musgrave.

"This distinguished surname is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and a locational name deriving from a pair of villages near Kirkby Stephen in Westmorland, called Great and Little Musgrave." Surname Database

This post follows our Musgrove family's journey and what remains of their landmarks.

John Musgrove: Grandson of Cuthbert

Our Georgia Musgrove family shares a surname with the 'Pocahontas of the South'; Mary Musgrove. Her husband, John Musgrove, was the first to welcome James Oglethorpe to what would become the new colony of Georgia.

Mary Musgrove was a Creek Indian. John Musgrove, Jr.'s mother was Cherokee. His father was a South Carolina Indian trader and mediator to the colonists. John and Mary married in 1715 as part of peace negotiations. All their offspring died in childhood.

St Cuthbert's Church
Edenhall, England

Musgrave Men: Their Marriages, Castles and Titles

The Musgrave family is from Great Musgrave in Cumbria, England, on the northwestern border of Scotland and England. This area was known as "the debatable lands." At different times, both England and Scotland laid claim to them.

Cumberland on the
English-Scottish border