Chevy Chase
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Chevy Chase. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
chev’i chas, a famous old English ballad of border warfare. The incidents recounted are not regarded as historical, although the story is probably founded on some actual encounter between Percy and Douglas. It has been confounded with the Scotch ballad, The Battle of Otterbourne, as the events celebrated are similar. There are two versions of the ballad. The older one is sometimes called The Hunting of the Cheviot. Both versions may be found in Percy's Reliques. The name Chevy Chase has been variously explained, as a corruption of a French word meaning a raid, and as derived from the name Cheviot Hills , and meaning the Cheviot hunting ground. See Ballad ; Cheviot Hills The old song of Chevy Chase is the favorite ballad of the common people of England; and Ben Jonson used to say he had rather have been the author of it than of all of his works.--Addison, Spectator.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the name of a celebrated British Border ballad, which is probably founded on some actual encounter which took place between its the heroes, Percy and Douglas, although it are not hisincidents mentioned in torical. There are two versions of the ballad bearing the name of "Chevy Chase," an older one, originally ally called "The Hunting of the Cheviot," and a more modern one. From the fact that the older version is mentioned in the "Complaynt of Scotland," written in 1548, it is clear that it was known in age of Scotland before that time. The to the more modern version is believed be not later than the reign of Charles II. This is the version which forms the subject of the critique by Addison in Nos. 70 and 74 of the "Spectator."
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The scholarly account here still stands: Chevy Chase survives in two versions, the older "Hunting of the Cheviot" and a smoother seventeenth-century rewrite, and neither records a real battle, though both echo the genuine Percy-Douglas fighting around Otterburn in 1388. What has firmed up since Aiton's wrote this in 1910 is the cataloguing: Francis James Child's collection, finished in 1898, fixed the ballad as No. 162, with "The Battle of Otterburn" separately as No. 161, which is how it is cited today rather than through Percy's Reliques. The oldest text is preserved in a mid-sixteenth-century manuscript copied by the minstrel Richard Sheale, and the Complaynt of Scotland reference of 1548 that Collier's cites in 1921 remains the earliest firm mention. The one thing the old entries could not foresee is that for most readers now the phrase means either the Maryland suburb or the American comedian who took it as a stage name, not a Border song Ben Jonson envied.
Written for this edition, 2026.