Week 23 brings more Child; one of the biggish ones, and certainly one of my favourites.

Little Musgrave is Child 81, and it's what we now think of as a typical Child ballad: it's longish, it's bloody, it comes in several variants and it's got some unforgettable images. (Apart from the confrontation between Musgrave and Lord Barnard – both of whom display a remarkable degree of sang froid in the circumstances – I'm particularly fond of the verse beginning "Is not your hawk"; as if to say, why would you want to leave *now*, when your life's about as good as it's ever going to be? (She was right about that, of course.)) This version is based on Nic Jones's recorded version, only with different words and a different tune. The tune, in fact, is my own, although it is influenced by...

Shady Grove, which probably needs less introduction to most people reading this than it did to me. The arrangement isn't quite what I thought I was doing when I started work on the song, but I don't think I've ruined it completely. (It would take quite a lot to ruin a song like that.)

52 Folk Songs is at http://www.52folksongs.com