Musgrave's misfortune and a comic king

The pub was the Railway Inn, the music machine played Planxty, a charming Irish folk band which reverberated in the 1970s.

The song, all 31 verses of it, was a sort of medieval Lady Chatterley's Lover in which the key players were Lord and Lady Barnard and a poor chap called Little Musgrave. Gadfly, of course, was aghast.

Little Musgrave came to the church door,

The priest was at the Mass,

But he had more mind of the fine women

Than he had of our Ladyes grace.

And some of them were clad in greene

And others were clad in pall;

And then came in my lord Barnardes wife

The fairest among them all.

The timeless outcome can probably be imagined. Her ladyship and Little Musgrave adjourn to her love nest - Planxty place it Bucklesford-Bury, other versions at Oxenhall - but the plot is overheard by her foot page, who rushes off to snitch to his master.

The bower was "full daintilye bedight", which rather conveniently rhymes with "lig in my armes all night".

Lord Barnard hurried to the seductive scene, Little Musgrave ignored warnings - space and grace limit the details - before bursting in on the illicit lovers.

He lifted up the coverlett,

He lifted up the sheete,

How now, how now, my little Musgrave

Dost finde my gaye ladye sweete?

Ever noble, Lord Barnard declined to slay a naked man. He ordered Musgrave to dress, gave him a sword, then killed both Musgrave and, in particularly gruesome manner, his own wife.

The remorse was immediate, the guilt overwhelming. His lordship blamed everyone else.

For I have slaine the fairest sir knighte

That ever rode on a steede,

So have I done the fairest ladye

That ever ware womans weede.

A grave, a grave, Lord Barnard cryde,

To putt these lovers in;

But lay my ladye o' the upper hande,

For she comes o' the better kin.

The song is very old and clearly has no connection whatever with the present lord of Raby Castle, who'll be 82 in September. It still echoed all the way home.

ANOTHER version of the song changes "Lord Barnard" to "Lord Darlington", one of the family's ancient manorial titles.

In another account, "Little Musgrave" becomes Mattie Groves. A folk singer hereabouts even recalls a rendition by White Lightning in which Mattie Groves sits up in bed and shoots Lord Barnard with a machine gun.

It seems to be taking updating a little far.

Acknowledging a "great story", a BBC Radio 3 website reckons the ballad of Lord Barnard and Little Musgrave "almost like an 11th century soap opera". The unfortunate Musgrave is believed to have been a knight from Featherstone Castle in Northumberland, eventually situated next to the glorious little railway line from Haltwhistle to Alston, though the family came originally from Westmorland.

"Musgrave", near Appleby, meant "the grove where mice live". None of this may entirely be relevant, but it didn't half pass the time in Preston.

LAST week's column was something of a Morris major, both extolling those quaint folk dancing rituals and seeking eminent people of that name.

Clive Sledger in Aldbrough St John, near Richmond, found 36 Morrises in his Concise Dictionary of National Biography ("a snip for £4 at a car boot sale") but had only heard of William Richard Morris, later Lord Nuffield.

"The rest were seafarers, military gentlemen and academics, of whom there were no fewer than seven Welsh poets. Interestingly, there were no members of the fairer sex."

THERE'S Estelle Morris, of course, and Desmond Morris and Sir Clive Morris, but the most interesting of all may have been the Rev Marcus Morris, founder in April 1950 of the Eagle comic and subsequently of its sister publications Robin, Swift and Girl.

Eagle, best known and most influential, featured Dan Dare, PC 49, Harris Tweed and - for 19 weeks until inexplicably scuttled - Captain Pugwash. Morris signed a weekly letter to his young readers.

David Hockney and Gerald Scarfe both had illustrations in Eagle when teenagers; Stephen Hawking reckoned that Dan Dare - "Pilot of the future" - launched him towards cosmology.

Morris was a radical, sometimes confrontational Church of England priest who believed he could spread the word through journalism. His parish magazine sold nationally.

He himself, however, had a fondness for what might be termed the Little Musgraves, was a "legendary" drinker and had what a biographer coyly describes as a "generous expense account".

Eagle soared and fell to earth, folding in 1968. Marcus Morris died soon afterwards - a comic hero, nonetheless.

JON Smith in Teesdale consults his copy of Dr Samuel Johnson's Dictionary - "sadly but a second edition, well tattered but fun for all that" - in which a Morris dance is defined as "a dance in which bells are gingled, or swords and staves clashed".

"Gingle", defined as "to utter a sharp, clattering noise", deserves resurrection, Jon supposes. It has a certain ring, anyway.

Johnson's Dictionary first appeared 250 years ago last Friday, an anniversary marked by a specially minted 50p coin and by a leader in The Times. "It remains the only lexicon which can be read for pleasure as well as use."

Dr Johnson, added The Times debatably, "has become England's secular patron saint". If he hasn't, who has?

SIMILARLY saluting the good doctor, the Sunday Times resurrected three of his definitions.

Cough: "A convulsion of the lungs, vellicated by some sharp serosity."

Tarantula: "An insect whose bite is only cured by musick."

Etch: "A country word of which I know not the meaning."

"Etch" is now much more familiar, especially in the phrase in the phrase "His face etched with grief."

It is a journalistic term, meaning "He looked mildly disappointed."

...and finally a foot note, or possibly even a sore point. Returning to the subject of leg ulcers, recently vexatious hereabouts, Dorothy Chambers in Durham reports that her husband was advised by a nurse to take a sheepskin rug to bed on which to rest his feet and ankles. Wool over the eyes? "Not at all," insists Dorothy, "it works."

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