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about this song
This is a traditional song, perhaps Scottish in origin. There are heard versions with alternative names such as Matty Groves. It's an English language folk ballad which describes an adulterous tryst between a man and a woman that is ended when the woman's husband discovers and kills them. It dates to at least the 17th century, and is one of the Child Ballads collected by the 19th-century American scholar Francis James Child. It has several other variant names, including Lady Barnard.