So, we'll go no more a roving the latter part of it, and sitting up late o' nights--had knocked me up a little. But it is over--and it is now Lent, with all its abstinence and sacred music... Though I did not dissipate much upon the whole, yet I find 'the sword wearing out the scabbard,' though I have but just turned the corner of twenty nine." The poem seems to have been suggested in part by the refrain of a Scottish song known as "The Jolly Beggar." The Jolly Beggar was published in Herd's "Scots Songs" in 1776, 41 years before Byron's letter, and goes partially
Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush e'8 d'4. | g'8 g' g' g'4 b'8 | d"4 b'8 g'4 g'8 | a'4 a'8 d'4 d'8 | g'4. g' | \bar "|." } \addlyrics { Here we go round the mul -- b'ry bush, The mul -- b'ry bush, The mul -- b'ry bush. Here we go round the mul -- b'ry bush So ear -- ly in the mor -- ning. }</score> The rhyme was first recorded by James Orchard Halliwell as an English children's game in the mid-19th century. He noted that there was a similar game with the lyrics "Here we go round the bramble