The Ballad of Chevy Chase

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There are two English ballads known as The Ballad of Chevy Chase but the nature of ballads mean that there may well have been many more versions of this once popular song.

The ballads tell the story of a large hunting party ("chase") in the Cheviot Hills, hence 'the chevy chase'. The chase is led by Percy, the English Earl of Northumberland. The Scottish Earl Douglas had forbidden this hunt, and interprets it as an invasion of Scotland. In response he attacks, causing a bloody battle which only 110 people survived.

They are thought to have been based on the events of The Battle of Otterburn in 1388, although the account of the battle is not historically accurate and it may relate to border skirmishes up to fifty years later. There is also a third ballad named The Battle of Otterburn which is assuredly about this battle.

The first of the two ballads of Chevy Chase was perhaps written as early as the 1430s but the earliest record we have of it is in The Complaynt of Scotland one of the first printed books from Scotland. The Complaynt of Scotland was printed about 1540 and in it the ballad is called The Hunting of Cheviot.

Sir Philip Sidney said of this early ballad:

"I never Heard the old song of Percie and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet" -- Defence of Poetry.

This seems to have sparked renewed interest in the old ballad and the second of the ballads appears to have been written shortly afterwards, perhaps around 1620. The second version was also highly regarded, Addison called it "the favourite of the common people of England" and Ben Jonson went as far as to say that he had rather have been the author of it than of all his works.

Both ballads were collected in Thomas Percy's Reliques and the first of the ballads in Francis James Child's Child Ballads.