As I did with Annachie Gordon, I've taken an old folk song and dramatised the story.

The Child ballads are a set of several hundred songs published during the second half of the 19th Century by Francis Childs in a book called The English and Scottish Traditional Ballads. I first stumbled across it in a little known James Mitchener book, The Drifters, where one of the characters would sing the songs, which she introduced by their index numbers.

The most famous of these songs is Number 81, variously known as Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard, Matty Groves or just Little Musgrave. The song describes an affair between a young man and a noblewoman, and its tragic end. It originated in the north of England and is thought to date from the early 17th century. It has been widely covered by a range of different artists but it is best known in the modern era for a recording in the 1970s by the Irish folk group, Planxty. It is that version which inspired this story.