John Barleycorn

For 21 October, after a harvest with a good barley crop, Hone printed Burns’s version of the old ballad of John Barleycorn. In it three kings swear that Barleycorn shall die, and he is ploughed under, rises in spring, is cut down, threshed, steeped, malted and ground, until at last he is drunk as ale. The song, in many versions, is still widely sung in folk clubs and sessions.