Paste Magazine : The Rose and the Briar

Paste Magazine :: Review :: The Rose and the Briar :: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad - Edited by Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus

Some of the old songs have a complicated history and a varied pollination. “Matty Groves,” for instance, a bloody tale of adultery avenged, came to its maturity in England as “Little Musgrave” and “Lady Darnell,” then passed on to America (where some iterations allow the star-crossed lovers to live). But it was “a degenerate American version” that was covered by the English folk-rock group Fairport Convention.