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
A-Hunting We Will Go A-Hunting We Will Go A-Hunting We Will Go is a popular folk song and nursery rhyme by English composer Thomas Arne. The "a-" is an archaic intensifying prefix; compare "Here We Come A-wassailing/Here We Come A-caroling" and lyrics to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" (e.g., “Six geese a-laying”). <poem>A-hunting we will go, A-hunting we will go Heigh-ho, the derry-o, A-hunting we will go. A-hunting we will go, A-hunting we will go We'll catch a fox and put him in a box And never let him go</poem> (Modern versions often change the last line to “And then we’ll let him go”.)