"Sir John Barlycorne fought in a boule Who wonne the victorie, And made them all to fume and sweare That Barlycorne should die. "Some said kill him, some said drowne, Others wisht to hang him hie; For as many as follow Barlycorne Shall surely beggars die. "Then with a plough they plow'd him up, And thus they did devise, To burie him quicke within the earth, And sware he should not rise. "With harrowes strong they combèd him And burst clods on his head, A joyfull banquet then they made When Barlycorne was dead." Then the ballad runs on the same as ours. Burns got hold of this ballad, and tinkered it up into the shape in which it appears in his collected works, altering some expressions, and adding about six stanzas. He in no way improved it. Jameson, in his "Popular Ballads," Edinburgh, 1806, tells us that he had heard it sung in Morayshire before that Burns' songs were published. Dixon, in his collection of the "Songs of the English Peasantry," 1846, says that "John Barleycorn" was sung throughout England to the tune of "Stingo, or Oil of Barley," which may be found in Chappell, from the "Dancing Master," in which it occurs from 1650 to 1690. But this is not the air to which it is set in the Broadsides above referred to, nor is it that to which it is sung in the West of England. Dr. Barrett has given a different "John Barleycorn" in his "English Folk-Songs," and another is in the _Folk-Song Journal_, vol. i. p. 81. The words as now sung may be found in "The Mountain of Hair Garland," B.M. (1162, c 4), _circ._ 1760. It is also among Such's broadsides. Words and air were taken down by Mr. Bussell, from James Mortimore, a cripple, at Princetown, in 1890. A version taken down in Sussex, to a different tune, is seen in the _Folk-Song Journal_. This begins-- "There were three men came out of the West, They sold their wheat for rye; They made an oath and a solemn oath, John Barleycorn should die." One verse is not in our version-- "And in the mash-tub he was put, And they scalded him stark blind. And then they served him worse than that They cast him to the swine."