"The Ballad of Chevy Chase" is an English ballad, catalogued as Child Ballad 162 (Roud 223 [1] ). There are two extant ballads under this title, both of which narrate the same story. As ballads existed within oral tradition before being written down, other versions of this once-popular song also may have existed.
Its tune has been used by other, unconnected songs.
The ballads tell the story of a large hunting party upon a parcel of hunting land (or chase ) in the Cheviot Hills, a range of rolling hills straddling the Anglo-Scottish border between Northumberland and the Scottish Borders—hence, Chevy Chase. The hunt is led by Percy, the English Earl of Northumberland, against the wishes of the Scottish Earl Douglas, who had forbidden it. Douglas interprets the party's arrival as an invasion of Scotland and attacks. Only 110 people survive the bloody battle that follows.
Thomas Percy and scholar Francis J. Child noted similarities with the older "The Battle of Otterburn", about the 1388 Battle of Otterburn. Neither set of lyrics is completely historically accurate. [2] Versions of either ballad often contain parallel biographical and historical information; nonetheless, the differences led Child to believe that they did not originally refer to the same occurrence. [3]
Simpson suggests that the music of "Chevy Chase" was identical to the tune of "Flying Flame", in which the former superseded the latter by the beginning of the seventeenth century. [4]
Both ballads were collected in Thomas Percy's Reliques. The first of the ballads is in Francis James Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads . Different versions were collected in England, Scotland, and the United States. [1]
Versions of "The Ballad of Chevy Chase" exist in several ballad collections, including the Roxburghe Ballads, the Pepys Library, the Huntington Library Miscellaneous, the Glasgow University Library, and the Crawford Collection at the National Library of Scotland. The ballads in these collections were printed with variations between 1623 and 1760. [5] Online facsimiles of the ballad are also available for public consumption at the English Broadside Ballad Archive and other online repositories.
The first of the two ballads of Chevy Chase may have been written as early as the 1430s, but the earliest record we have of it is in The Complaynt of Scotland , printed around 1549. One of the first printed books in Middle Scots, the book calls the ballad The Hunting of Cheviot.
The first manuscript version of the ballad was written around 1550 (MS Ashmole 48, Bodleian Library). [6]
In the seventeenth century, the tune was licensed in 1624 and again in 1675. [7]
In 1711, Joseph Addison wrote in The Spectator :
The old song of "Chevy-Chase" is the favourite ballad of the common people of England, and Ben Jonson used to say he had rather have been the author of it than of all his works. Sir Philip Sidney, in his discourse of Poetry [ The Defence of Poesie ], speaks of it in the following words: "I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart more moved than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung by some blind crowder with no rougher voice than rude style, which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?" For my own part, I am so professed an admirer of this antiquated song, that I shall give my reader a critique upon it without any further apology for so doing. [8]
Apparently, Addison was unaware that the ballad, which he proceeded to analyze in detail, was not the same work praised by Sidney and Jonson. [8] The second of the ballads appears to have been written in modernized English shortly after Sidney's comments, perhaps around 1620, and to have become the better-known version.
William Hutton, in A Journey from Birmingham to London (1785), mentions "the old song of Chevy Chace" and its tale about "the animosity between England and Scotland". [10]
In Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy (1817), the main character, Frank, upon seeing the trophies on the walls of Osbaldistone hall, imagines them being from the Chevy Chase.
An early and popular painting of 1825–6 by Edwin Landseer was titled The Hunting of Chevy Chase.
In Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847), Catherine Heathcliff ( née Catherine Linton) scorns Hareton Earnshaw's primitive attempts at reading, saying, "I wish you would repeat Chevy Chase as you did yesterday; it was extremely funny!" [11]
In Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1855), on hearing the conversation between Mr. Thornton and her father, Margaret Hale wonders, “How in the world had they got from cog-wheels to Chevy Chace?” [12]
In F. Anstey's Vice Versa (1882), the boys at Dr. Grimstone's boarding school are required to play a game called "chevy" (a version of "prisoners' base" or "darebase"), "so called from the engagement famed in ballad and history". [13]
A tract of land in British America was named "Cheivy Chace" by 1725, and was in the 1890s and early 1900s developed into the affluent areas of Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Chevy Chase, Washington, D.C. A golf club in the Maryland Chevy Chase inspired the name of Chevy Chase, Lexington, Kentucky.
A shopping mall in the Eldon Square Shopping Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne is named "Chevy Chase" in allusion to the ballad. [14]
The ballad inspired the childhood nickname and adult stage name of the American comedian and actor Chevy Chase (born Cornelius Crane Chase, 1943).
The ballad has given the English language the verb to chivvy, meaning to pester or encourage someone to perform a task. [15] [16]
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in Australia, North Africa, North America and South America.
Chevy Chase is the name of both a town and an unincorporated census-designated place that straddle the northwest border of Washington, D.C., and Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. Several settlements in the same area of Montgomery County and one neighborhood of Washington include Chevy Chase in their names. These villages, the town, and the CDP share a common history and together form a larger community colloquially referred to as Chevy Chase.
"Barbara Allen" is a traditional folk song that is popular throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. It tells of how the eponymous character denies a dying man's love, then dies of grief soon after his untimely death.
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s.
"The Daemon Lover" – also known as "James Harris", "A Warning for Married Women", "The Distressed Ship Carpenter", "James Herries", "The Carpenter’s Wife", "The Banks of Italy", or "The House-Carpenter" – is a popular ballad dating from the mid-seventeenth century, when the earliest known broadside version of the ballad was entered in the Stationers' Register on 21 February 1657.
The Battle of Otterburn took place according to Scottish sources on 5 August 1388, or 19 August according to English sources, as part of the continuing border skirmishes between the Scots and English.
Otterburn is a small village in Northumberland, England, 31 miles (50 km) northwest of Newcastle upon Tyne on the banks of the River Rede, near the confluence of the Otter Burn, from which the village derives its name. It lies within the Cheviot Hills about 16 miles (26 km) from the Scottish border. The parish of Otterburn is at the heart of Redesdale, a Northumbrian upland valley.
A broadside is a single sheet of inexpensive paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations. They were one of the most common forms of printed material between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in Britain, Ireland and North America because they are easy to produce and are often associated with one of the most important forms of traditional music from these countries, the ballad.
The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry is a collection of ballads and popular songs collected by Bishop Thomas Percy and published in 1765.
Chevy Chase is an American comedian and actor.
"Geordie" is an English language folk song concerning the trial of the eponymous hero whose lover pleads for his life. It is listed as Child ballad 209 and Number 90 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The ballad was traditionally sung across the English speaking world, particularly in England, Scotland and North America, and was performed with many different melodies and lyrics. In recent times, popular versions have been performed and recorded by numerous artists and groups in different languages, mostly inspired by Joan Baez's 1962 recording based on a traditional version from Somerset, England.
Robin Hood's Chase is Child ballad 146 and a sequel to Child ballad 145, "Robin Hood and Queen Katherine". This song has survived as, among other forms, a late seventeenth-century English broadside ballad. It is one of several ballads about the medieval folk hero that form part of the Child Ballads, a comprehensive collection of traditional English and Scottish ballads.
Robin Hood and the Tanner is Child ballad 126. It is a late seventeenth-century English broadside ballad and one of several ballads about the medieval folk hero Robin Hood that form part of the Child ballad collection, which is one of the most comprehensive collections of traditional English ballads but has now been subsumed and surpassed by the Roud Folk Song Index.
"Edward" is a traditional murder ballad existing in several variants, categorised by Francis James Child as Child Ballad number 13 and listed as number 200 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The ballad, which is at least 250 years old, has been documented and recorded numerous times across the English speaking world into the twentieth century.
"The Dowie Dens o Yarrow", also known as "The Braes of Yarrow" or simply "Yarrow", is a Scottish border ballad. It has many variants and it has been printed as a broadside, as well as published in song collections. It is considered to be a folk standard, and many different singers have performed and recorded it.
"King John and the Bishop" is an English folk-song dating back at least to the 16th century. It is catalogued in Child Ballads as number 45 and Roud Folk Song Index 302.
"The Battle of Otterburn" is a Scottish ballad, catalogued as Child Ballad 161, Roud 3293. It is an account of the Scottish victory at the Battle of Otterburn in 1388. This battle also inspired "The Ballad of Chevy Chase", an English version, but the Scottish version is more historically accurate.
The Cheviot Hills, or sometimes The Cheviots, are a range of uplands straddling the Anglo-Scottish border between Northumberland and the Scottish Borders. The English section is within the Northumberland National Park. The range includes The Cheviot, plus Hedgehope Hill to the east, Windy Gyle to the west, and Cushat Law and Bloodybush Edge to the south.
Lady Isabel's Tragedy, or "The Lady Isabella's Tragedy; or, The Step-Mother's Cruelty" is a broadside ballad, which dates from, by estimation of the English Short Title Catalogue, as early as 1672 and as late as 1779—suggesting its popularity and positive reception. The ballad begins, "There was a Lord of worthy Fame." Copies of the ballad can be found at the National Library of Scotland, the British Library, University of Glasgow Library, the Huntington Library, and the Pepys Library at Magdalene College. Alternatively, online facsimiles of the ballad are available for public consumption at sites like the English Broadside Ballad Archive. The ballad has notable connections to the stories of Snow White, the myth of Philomela, and Titus Andronicus.
Coridon and Parthenia or "Coridon and Parthenia, The Languishing Shepherd made Happy. Or, Faithful Love rewarded" is a broadside ballad, which dates from, by estimation of the English Short Title Catalogue, the last three decades of the seventeenth century. The ballad begins, "When busie Fame ore all the Plain,/ Parthenias Praises rung." Copies of the ballad can be found at the National Library of Scotland, the British Library, and the University of Glasgow Library. Alternatively, online facsimiles of the ballad are available for public consumption.