Chevy Chace

"The Ballad of Chevy Chase"
Copperplate illustration for 1790 edition
English and Scottish folk song
Native language(s)	English
Area(s)	collected in England, Scotland, and the US
First publication	The Complaynt of Scotland (ca. 1550)
Catalogue(s)	Child 162, Roud 223
Notable song book(s)	Reliques of Ancient English Poetry by T. Percy (1765); Roxburghe Ballads
Genre	Border ballad

"The Ballad of Chevy Chase" is an English ballad, catalogued as Child Ballad 162 (Roud 223). There are two extant ballads under this title, both of which narrate the same story. As ballads existed within oral tradition before being written down, other versions of this once popular song also may have existed. Moreover, other ballads used its tune without necessarily referring to "The Ballad of Chevy Chase."

The ballads tell the story of a large hunting party upon a parcel of hunting land (or chase) in the Cheviot Hills (a range of rolling hills straddling the Anglo-Scottish border between Northumberland and the Scottish Borders), hence the term, Chevy Chase. The hunt is led by Percy, the English Earl of Northumberland. The Scottish Earl Douglas had forbidden this hunt and interpreted it as an invasion of Scotland. In response he attacked, causing a bloody battle after which only 110 people survived. Both ballads were collected in Thomas Percy's Reliques and the first of the ballads in Francis James Child's Child Ballads. Different versions were collected in England, Scotland, and the US.

Scholar Francis J. Child as well as Thomas Percy noted similarities between this ballad and the older "The Battle of Otterburn", which refers to the historical Battle of Otterburn in 1388, although neither set of lyrics are completely historically accurate. Versions of either ballad often contain parallel biographical and historical information; nonetheless, the differences led Child to believe that they did not originally refer to the same occurrence.