Digital Index of Middle English Verse: No. 5432

DIMEV 5432

IMEV 3445.5

NIMEV TP 1578

The Percy out of Northumberland and a vow to God made he

The Hunting of the Cheviot — in two parts, 25 and 45 cross-rhymed quatrains

Note: For its later variant see 1577; for a poem of an earlier border raid from which several stanzas are borrowed see 2713.

Title(s): The Hunting of the Cheviot

Subjects: historical poems; ballads

Versification: — four-line — abcb

Manuscript Witnesses:

1.Source: Oxford, Bodleian Library Ashmole 48 (SC 6933), ff. 15v-18

First Lines:

The perse owt off Northombarlonde and a vowe to god mayd he
That he wold hunte in the mowntayns off chyviat with In days iij
In the magger of doughte dogles & all that euer with him be
The fattiste harts In all cheviat he sayd he wold kyll and carry them away…

Last Lines:

…Ihesus Crist our ballys bete & to the blys vs bringe
Thus was the hountynge of the chivyat god send vs all good endyng

Note: At the end on f. 18: ‘Expliceth quoth Rychard Sheale’.

Editions:

Hearne, Thomas, ed. Guilielmi Neubrigensis Historia. Oxford: Sheldonian, 1719: 1.lxxxii.

Percy, Thomas. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. 3 vols. London: J. Dodsley, 1765, and subsequent editions: 1.4.

The Annual Register, or a View of the History of Politics and Literature for the Year 1776. London: Printed for J. Dodsley, in Pall-Mall, 1777: 8.261-71.

Wright, Thomas, ed. Songs and Ballads, with other Short Poems, chiefly of the Reign of Philip and Mary. Roxburghe Club 78. London: Nicholas, 1860: 24-8.

See Morris and Skeat (1882)

XRichard Morris, and Walter William Skeat. Specimens of Early English , Pt. I, A.D. 1150-A.D.1300. Oxford: Clarendon, 1882, 2nd ed. 1885; Pt. II, A.D. 1298-A.D.1393, Oxford: Clarendon, 1872, 2nd ed. 1894; Pt. III. Orig. published separately, 1871

: 67.

Ritson, Joseph, ed. Ancient Songs from the Time of King Henry the Third to the Revolution. London, 1790. Further editions as Ritson, Joseph, ed. Ancient Songs and Ballads from the Reign of King Henry the Second to the Revolution. 2 vols. London, 1829; re-ed. William Carew Hazlitt London, 1877: 92.

Child, Francis James. English and Scottish Ballads. 8 vols. in 4, forerunner of next entry. Boston: Houghton, Osgood, also Little, Brown, 1857-58 et seq: 7.29-42.

Child, Francis James. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 vols. in 10 parts. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882-98: no. 162, 3.307-10.

Flügel, Ewald, ed. Neuenglisches Lesebuch. 1 Bd. Halle: Niemayer, 1895: 198.

Bronson, Walter Cochrane, ed. English Poems. 4 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907: 1.216.

Gummere, Francis Barton. Old English Ballads. Boston: Ginn, 1894: 105-15.

Sargent, Helen Child, and George Lyman Kittredge. English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Cambridge edition of the Poets. London: Harrap, 1904: 393-7.

Arber, Edward. The Dunbar Anthology, 1401-1508. London, New York: Frowde, 1901: 63-8.

Leach, Edward, ed. The Ballad Book. New York: Harper, 1955: 447-54.

Hodgart, Matthew, ed. The Faber Book of Ballads. London: Faber & Faber, 1965: 96.

Arngart, Olof Sigrid. Two English Border Ballads: The Battle of Otterburn, Hunting of the Cheviot. Acta Universitatis Lundensis, Sectio 1, Theologica, juridica, humaniora 18. Lund: Gleerup, 1973.

Pearsall, Derek, ed. Chaucer to Spenser: An Anthology of Writings in English 1375-1575. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999: 407-13.

Arngart, Olof Sigrid. “The Hunting of the Cheviot Ballad.” English Studies 72 (1991): 401-13 [a reconstructed text].

Perret, Xavier, ed. “An Annotated Text of ‘The Battle of the Cheviot’ with a French Rendition.” English Studies 86 (2005): 1-39: 12-34.