My favourite version of 'Little Musgrave' is by James Yorkston. He repeats the first verse despite the fact that he sings every verse of this long ballad. In this instance, making a long song even longer, it adds to a sense of the epic. Yorkston's version gives the strongest sense I've yet heard of all the characters of the ballad being a sort of tragic community, a close-knit village whose fates could not possibly be other than intertwined. Everyone knows each other, everyone has their place. The repetition of the first line reinforces that.

One reason why repetition of the first line is so powerful when it works is that it implies a cycle. As if the events of the song are about to happen all over again and that the story is happening over and over again throughout the ages. An unbreakable circle.