Owing to the vagaries of translation, Mussorgsky's songs often go under a number of different titles in the West. The song he composed to a text of his own on December 19, 1867, for example, is called The Street Urchin in Boris Christoff's recording, A Naughty Boy in Victor Seroff's biography of the composer, and The Ragamuffin in M.D. Calvocoressi's biography of the composer and also in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Whatever its title, the song sets a nasty little text about a young boy making cruel and merciless fun of an apparently hideous old woman. Mussorgsky's music is in the "folk" style he had perfected in O Darling Savishna! of 1866; it has a melody built on an incessantly repeated motivic pattern that, as in O Darling Savishna! is in a fast 5/4 time. The song was dedicated to Vladimir Stasov, the Russian critic and writer who gave the name of the Mighty Handful to the group of nationalist composers gathered around the charismatic Mily Balakirev.

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