The Three Jacks: Music

• MP3 short clip, hi-fi play (broadband)
• MP3 short clip, lo-fi play (modem)

Matty Groves is one of the oldest and one of the most popular of the ballads from the Scottish border, dating back to at least the 16th century and maybe much earlier. Francis James Child lists fourteen versions in his seminal work “The English and Scottish Popular ballads.” Variants of the song were sung throughout the American Appalachians from the 17th century onwards, where this story also sowed the seeds of the American ballad “Shady Groves.”


“Matty Groves” or “Mathie Groves” has gone by many names over his long history: “Young Musgrave,” “Little Mousgrove,” “Wee Mousegrove,” “Little Sir Grove,” “Little Mushiegrove” and “Little Massgrove.” The Lord and Lady in question have, similarly, gone by a wide selection of last names over the centuries including: Barnard, Barnabas, Barnet, Barnett, Burnett, Arlen, Arnold, Daniel and Donald. One version even inverts the names and terms the lady “Lady Mousgrave.” We settled for “Matty Groves” and “Lord and Lady Donald.”


The song was brought into the modern folk-rock consciousness by Fairport Convention in the 70’s. The first instrumental pass of our version follows the Fairport model. However, the rest of the passes are an Elizabethan dance tune from the Playford Collection – “Goddesses” – which was also popular in the early American colonies. (“Goddesses” was identified as a likely “soul mate” for “Matty” by our Renaissance musical maestro, Jack Stamates).


Where we further depart from the Fairport mold is in the juxtaposition of Mr. Stamates’ crumhorns, rebecks and other ancient instruments, against Jack Shawde’s guitars, Homer’s harmonicas and Diane’s drums - and in the fact that we have rescued all the verses we could find, which makes the song close to three times as long as the Fairport version. (The decision to record a 12-minute tune is always a head-scratcher – but in the end we couldn’t bear to leave any of the story out!)