The Everyday Uses of Nineteenth Century
Broadside Ballads and the Writings of John Clare

Michael N. Joy
Part 1: Introduction

Broadside ballads were simple paper sheets, printed on one side
only, usually containing popular songs of the day, but could also
relate dramatic news flashes such as fires and accidents, sensational
crimes, executions or even entirely spurious stories concocted torouse interest and attract a few pennies.ῌ Decorated with crude
woodcuts and often plagued by careless typesetting they werecheap products sold for a penny or even halfpenny a sheet. They aretypified as literature for the lower class and, although they aretreated generally as an urban product sold on city streets,῍ theyalso circulated extensively in the countryside, as will be shown
below.

Although there are a number of sources about a few of thebetter known English printers῎ as well as the sellers of broadsides,
there has been a curious and profound lack of attention given towhat roles they filled in the everyday lives of the buyers. Suchissues as how broadsides reached their intended market, what motivated a customer to buy, and how they were subsequently used,have rarely been considered.

In pursuing this issue, a chance encounter῏ with the work ofῌ 1 ῌ

John Clare, the English rural poet (1793-1864), revealed a life andart that was permeated by the influences of broadside ballads. The
sounds of the ballads rang in his home from infancy, they appearedin his adult life, found places in his own poetryῌ and his publishedwork was itself appropriated and adapted by the popular press to be
sold on the streets in broadsides.ῌ

The first aim of this paper will be to present, in Part 2, materials
from Clare’s life and work that show encounters of persons, real andpoetic, with broadsides in rural settings, and the uses that weremade of them. In that presentation, some important themes will be
noted in the following manner: (see RECITATION). These are intended to direct readers to the Appendix, and the second aim of thispaper, which is to present discussions of these themes, in alphabetical order of their titled subjects. These discussions will draw onother sources that will further illustrate the uses of broadsideballads and will, hopefully, place into broader contexts that will
enhance and clarify the importance of the examples selected fromClare’s life and works.

Part 2: Broadside ballads in John Clare’s life, poetry and autobiographical writing

Clare was a farm worker from the village of Helpston in Northampton who had only the most rudimentary education, but also a
consuming interest in poetry and a burning desire to write his own.
By dint of self-education and endless composing and scribbling on
any available scraps of paper he became an accomplished and, then,an acclaimed poet of rural themes.῍ῌ 2 ῌIn addition to intense reading of any volumes of poetry thatcame his way, it is also certain that the folk music and the popularsongs of the day were important influences on Clare’s work. As one
modern editor reflected in considering the few songs that Clarewrote, “If only we knew the music that sounded in Clare’s head as hewrote his songs a new dimension would be given them. As it is, weshould never forget that they are written by a purchaser of streetballads, a fiddler at public houses, a lover of gypsies and gypsy
music, and a frequenter of concerts and the vaudeville. Clare’ssong-writing was born in music; in the scrape of the fiddle and in
the voices of his mother and father singing in that small cottage inHelpston.”ῌ

Whereas his mother was totally illiterate, his father could readsome in the Bible and was fond of the cheaply produced chapbooks.
Further, “he was likewise fond of Ballads, & I have heard him makea boast of it over his horn of ale, with his merry companions ... thathe could sing or recite above a hundred; he had a tolerable good
voice, & was often called upon to sing at those carnivals of baccanalian merry makings”῍ (see RECITATION).

It was hearing his father, “humming over a song, a wretchedcomposition of those halfpenny ball[ a] ds,” that led Clare to attempt
to imitate them in his own writing.῎ A halfpenny was the price ofa single broadside sheet (or half sheet, the “slip ballad", if the seller
drove a harder bargain) in contrast to the more expensive songbooks. As one seller related in 1861, the broadside ballad was still
preferred to songbooks in the countryside, “They hold too much ...

ῌ 3 ῌ

the country people consider them too big, sir, and that it can’t be all
correct that’s in them. So they like the sheet better, that they’vebeen used it.”ῌ
῍ So, whereas broadside ballads are usually considered in the context of an urban street trade, it can be seen that they
made their way into even the most remote parts of the countryside(see RURAL TRADE). Although Clare found that a true poet such as
Wordsworth was “hawked about in penny-ballads”, he lamented
that rural customers imagined, “the paltry ballad-mongers, whose
productions supply hawkers with songs for country wakes andholidays”, to be the equals of rightfully recognized writers.ῌ
῎
Illustrations of this trade can be found in Clare’s poetry. For
example in “The Village Doctress”ῌ
῏ a thrifty cottage holder encounters the temptations of an itinerant seller.

Oft when a hawker calld agen her door
Tho shed complain shed but few pence to spend
Shed look his godly tales & ballads oer& neer failed buying his religious ware
But bawdy songs she never suffered there

It was certainly this “godly” end of the trade which was thesource for some of the Christmas decorations that Clare recalls
seeing in the village as a child, with the local church, “stuck withevergreens (emblems of Eternity) & the cottage windows & the
picture ballads on the wall all stuck with ivy holly Box & yew”ῌ
ῐ(see CHRISTMAS SHEETS).

Broadside ballads had a place in the rural fairs as well (seeῌ 4 ῌFAIRS). In “The Village Minstrel”,ῌ῍ Clare describes the annual
Statute Fair (a holiday feast and occasion for re-hiring casual agricultural workers) as a part of the cycle of life in the country. Amongthe young men and women of the district flocking to this event are
Clare’s characters, Hodge and his sweetheart. The fairgoers are
attracted to the stalls and sellers of cakes, nuts, gingerbread andribbons that the women urge the men to buy for them as had beenpromised. The men, certainly with thoughts of recompense on theway home, open their purses. Daunted by the prices, Hodge, a farmworker, is attracted to a much cheaper offer ῌ a ballad.
& there the ballad singers rave & rant
& hodge whose pockets wornt stand treats more highHears which his simpering lass may please to want
& brushing thro’ the crowd most manfullyOuts wi his pence the pleasing song to buy& crams it in her hand wi many a smile
The trifling present makes the maid comply
To promise him her company the while& strutting by her side at night he hands her oer the stile

Whether purchased at a fair or from a hawker at the doorstep,
one of the common uses of broadside ballads was as decorations forthe interiors of homes (see DECORATION). In “Dobson and Judie or
The Cottage”, Clare describes a happy farming couple and theirhome.ῌ
῎ After examining the roof, the windows and the sun they let
in, he turns to the interior.

The rooms more comfortable made

ῌ 5 ῌ

Than courts of pallaces can be
Tho all the ornament display’dWas furnish’d from necessity

Save Ballads, songs and Cutts, that hide
Both window-shutters, wall, and door,
Which tell of many-a-murder’d brideAnd desperate Battles daubbed oer‘Keep within compass’ courts the eye
To read and learn a morral truth
With ‘Golden Maxims’ paste’d nighAnd ‘Pious counsils’ plan’d for youth

There too on poltry paper wrought
Disgrac’d with songs upon the screen(Of some poor penny hawker bought)
King Charles’s ‘Golden Rules’ are seen

These with hundreds more beside
In every hole and corner shine
Displaying forth in cottage pride
An Exebition simply fine

Oh happy scenes what joys aboundNot only which thy walls posess
For every foot of Dobsons ground
Claims the sweet name of Hapinessῌ 6 ῌ

Here we see that the broadsides add color and decoration to therooms of the cottage. The subjects range from murder ballads tomore lofty maxims and Golden Rules. The text shows that they are
there for the audience to “read and learn”, but no indication thatthey are songs to be sung. Further, a shepherd in Clare’s “A Awthorn Nook” is not singing as “on his elbow lolls to read / His slip ofballads bought at neighboring fair”ῌ῍ (see READING).
Although it proved abortive, Clare’s first attempt at publication
might have been intended as a broadside ballad. The circumstancesarose when he was serving as a common soldier in the local militia
around 1812.ῌ
῎ The officers were the local gentry, while the enlisted
men were farm laborers who were quartered in isolated makeshiftbarracks from which they could easily steal away in the night toraid nearby orchards. The officers decided to discipline the men bytaking them into the field for two additional hours of drill from six
until eight in the morning. Being accustomed to such early hours on
the farm, the men thought nothing of it at all, but the officers foundthat “instead of harassing the men, they quickly harassed themselves.” Clare recorded the scene as follows:.....in one of these early exercises one of the oficers ladys whose fears for her husbands safty
seemd great even in little things sent the servent-maid after him with his breakfast as shecame simpering along making her timid enquirys the captains of companys declard thatthey thought Mr XXX had been too much of a

ῌ 7 ῌ

soldier to stand this & others swore upon theirhonours that he woud not stand it at length theenquiring maid found out her noble master whosneeringly disdaind to take it the maids only
reason for bringing it being that her mistress
was afraid that he would take cold by being outof doors in such unusual hours which to be sure
was a mortifying disclosure to the pen-featheredsoldier ‘Go home & teach your mistress to know
better girl’ was the gallant replye & his brotherofficers who were on the look-out to watch theevent when they saw the maiden depart hastend
up to congratulate his valour & shake handswith him as a brother worthy the name of soldier
the very clowns coud not help seeing this as
ridiculous & burst into a hearty laugh as the
farce ended this got into a byeword....

Clare “itched to do something” with the farcical picture and“wrote a ballad” which he took to a local printer for publication.

A young man behind the counter read it &laughd heartily saying he had heard of the circumstance but it was too personal to print &returned it I felt fearful of being found out so I
quickly destroyed it tearing it into little pieces as
I went along & then threw them away

Of course, it is impossible to say what form the ballad may have

ῌ 8 ῌ

taken if it had actually been printed, but the limited picture that canbe gained above suggests that a broadside would have been much
more likely, as opposed to a lengthier pamphlet.

When Clare’s first volume of poetry, Poems Descriptive of Rural
Life and Scenery, was published in 1820, it was an instant successand drew a great deal of attention. For the entertainment industryof that time, copyright was a very minor consideration and it was asif public acclaim established something like public domain. Whatever was popular soon found its way on to the stage or into theprinting press in forms not authorized by the creator. When, on
arrival in London a few months after his first book was published,
Clare saw playbills announcing that one of his songs was to be sungat Covent Garden, he appears only to regret arriving too late toattend the performance. Far from being incensed at the appropriation of his material, he was, “uncommonly pleased at the circumstance”.ῌ
῍At the same time, whatever was popular reading or singing
material was also very soon appropriated and sold on the streets.
The combination of a suddenly famous author and a song being
sung at a prime music hall by a leading artist created a demand that
could not be ignored by the broadside press, and they supplied theneed. The original, published title of Clare’s poem was, “The Meeting”, but in the broadside versions it appears as “Here we meet toosoon to part”, from its first line.ῌ
῎ To gain an insight to the processof converting a formal poem into a street song that met the expectations of the buyers, it will be useful to compare the original verses
with the broadside versions.

ῌ 9 ῌ

First, the original poem as published in John Taylor’s Introduction to Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery:ῌ
῍
The Meeting

Here we meet, too soon to part,
Here to leave will raise a smart,
Here I’ll press thee to my heart,
Where none have place above thee:
Here I vow to love thee well,And could words unseal the spell,
Had but language strength to tell,
I’d say how much I love thee.

Here, the rose that decks thy door,
Here, the thorn that spreads thy bow’r,
Here, the willow on the moor,
The birds at rest above thee,
Had they light of life to see,
Sense of soul like thee and me,
Soon might each a witness be
How doatingly I love thee.

By the night-sky’s purple ether,
And by even’s sweetest weather,That oft has blest us both together, -The moon that shines above thee,
And shews thy beautious cheeks so blooming,ῌ 10 ῌ

And by pale age’s winter coming,
The charms, and casualties of woman,
I will forever love thee.

There are two broadside versions of this song in the author’s
collection. One, by Catnach,ῌ῍ (see Figure 1) repeats, with small
variations, the first two verses of the original, but eliminates thethird and substitutes a different final verse:

There’s a church upon the hill,
Here the pure aud (sic) murm’ring rill,
Here oft I’ve vow’d to love thee still,‘Till death our love shall sever
Then to the altar let’s away,
Make this my love our bridal day,No longer happiness delay,
But make me blest for ever.
For then my love no more we’d part,No more by leaving raise such a smart
And fondly press thee to my heart,
And still for ever love thee.

The most obvious change in the substituted third verse is thepresence of “floaters”, those bits and pieces of trite and often usedphrases that litter all popular songs of a period.ῌ
῎ Phrases such as “achurch upon the hill”, “I vow’d to love thee still”, “then to the altar
let’s away”, and “Make this my love our bridal day”, with variations
in vocabulary, but never in sentiment, were simply required bypublic taste to be part of a ‘proper’ love song and were supplied.

ῌ 11 ῌ

How and when the new third verse was created is uncertain, but it
was unlikely to have been by the printer.ῌ῍
Catnach’s rival, John Pitts, produced a second version in theauthor’s collectionῌ῎ (see Figure 2). Like the Catnach sheet, this uses
only the first two verses of Clare’s original, but uses them in a very
different way. Pitts’ version begins with Clare’s original eight-line
first verse, but then repeats the first four lines as a chorus. This isfollowed by Clare’s second verse, followed by a final line (which isalso at the end of the lower margin of the sheet), “Here we meet,&c”, indicating that the four-line chorus is once more called for.

The importance of a chorus for a successful street song waspointed out to Mayhew by a seller of broadsides who emphaticallydeclared that a ballad on a subject had to have verses of at least
eight lines and, “a four-line chorus to every verse; and, if it’s theright sort, it’ll sell the ballad.”ῌ
῏ Clare’s work was clearly re-worked
to meet this generally accepted standard for street sale.ῌ
ῐ
The necessity of a chorus is related to the opportunity it afforded for communal singing. In a long description of the antics ofcostermongers in the gallery of the Vic Music Hall (formally known
as the Coburg), Mayhew relates that “the grand hit of the evening isalways when a song is sung to which the entire gallery can join inchorus.” The playbill of the evening even had printed under the titleof the featured song, “...‘assisted by the most numerous and effective
chorus in the metropolis’ --meaning the whole of the gallery.”ῌ
ῑPart 3: Conclusion

ῌ 12 ῌ

To put it most succinctly, the life and works of John Clare, as
briefly outlined above, speak for themselves and show that they are
an exceptionally rich source for understanding the everyday uses ofbroadside ballads in the nineteenth century. Certainly there is agreat deal more to be done in understanding Clare and his world
than has been accomplished in this short paper, but what is mostcertain is that further work will lead to even better understanding,
not only of Clare, but also how broadside ballads were touched andused at the commonest rung of society.

Appendix: Themes in the uses of broadside ballads.

CHRISTMAS SHEETSThe subject of the Christmas sheets as a distinctive genre of thebroadside ballads is highly interesting and one that deserves a fullstudy of its own. However, it would be well to address a few strayremarks on the subject here. Writing in 1869, Charles Hindley had
the opportunity to interview people who had actually known theprinter James Catnach and obtain first hand information on his
London broadside press.ῌ
῍ The following is his description of contents of Christmas sheets and their importance in the annual cycleof the broadside business.

Christmas broad-sheets formed an important item in theoffice of the ‘Catnach Press.’ But although the sale was verylarge, it only occupied one ‘short month’ in the year. This
enabled them to make Carols a stock job, so that when
trade in the Ballad, Sensational ‘Gallows,’ or any other lineῌ 13 ῌ

was dull, they used to fill up every spare hour in theworking off, or colouring them, so as to be ready to meetthe extraordinary demand, which was sure to be made at
the fall of the year. Each Christmas broad-sheet is headed
by a large wood-cut roughly coloured, and is double the sizeof the ordinary broad-sheet, and sells for a penny plain andtwo-pence coloured. It contains four or five carols, and one
or two very long narrative ballads of some twenty verses,
and three or four short pieces. The illustrations are of the
Crucifixion, the Raising of Lazarus, the Birth of Christ, theArk, the Last Supper, the Resurrection, and other kindred
subjects, in which modern Gothic churches, and men in
strange costumes are introducedῌ The sale of Christmas
broad-sheets was formerly enormous; and Catnach always
looked for a large return on capital, and a ‘good clearance’
immediately following the spurt for Guy Fawkes’ speechesin October, in each year.

Although these seasonal sheets were produced in immense
numbers, they are relatively rare survivors today compared to thelarge number of ordinary broadside ballads. There are, perhaps, tworeasons for this. First, their very large size meant that they could
not be stored and preserved as easily as the smaller, ordinary
broadsides, which could be stored in a small drawer or tucked away
in an album or the back of a book. Secondly, they were seasonaldecorations and, having been most likely pinned to a wall, would be
the worse for wear and were simply discarded with the other trashin the New Year. From Clare’s description, we can readily imagine
their ending up on a bonfire of the evergreens, holly and yew thatῌ 14 ῌ

were now dried and needing disposal.

One thing that strikes the modern reader of these Christmas
sheets is how few of their carols and songs are recognizable today.
Apart from “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” or “As Shepherds
Watched Their Flocks by Night”, most of them seem quite removed
from what might be considered to be a traditional Christmas repertoire. This was also recognized by an author who was writing a few
years in advance of Hindley.ῌ῍
In all those which we have seen, the only piece familiar to
us is that noble old carol, “When shepherds kept theirflocks by night.” Where the rest come from, we cannot evenconjecture ...... We do not suppose that the contents of these
Christmas broad-sheets are supplied by the same persons
who write the murder-ballads, or the attacks on crinoline.
They may be borrowed from well-known hymn-books forany thing we know.

Inasmuch as they are not recognizable as Christmas songs
today, or even when published a hundred and thirty years ago, thena reasonable assumption may be that we are dealing here withmaterial that was to be read rather than sung, which may be what
Hindley meant by, “narrative ballads”. In short, a great deal of thematerial on the Christmas sheets may have been considered thepenny press equivalent of the special Christmas numbers of Dickens’ Household Words journal or his Christmas novels.

DECORATION

ῌ 15 ῌ

The range of materials that Clare placed on the walls of Dobson
and Judie’s cottage is mirrored in the memoirs of Robert Roberts,
who recalled the scenes of his childhood in Wales in the 1830’s anddescribed the interior of the farmhouse in which he lived.ῌ
῍
Two or three broadsides, adorned with woodcuts, hideous
no doubt, but in our estimation, creditable specimens of thepictorial art, were pasted on various parts of the whitewashed walls. One is a doleful ditty about the great stormof 1839, detailing in unmelodious numbers the damage
done to ships and buildings by that great calamity; over theletterpress is a woodcut of Menai Bridge, coloured green,surprinted by a bright yellow ship in full sail. Another is asong of ‘meditations’ on a clock surrounded by various
nondescript figures. A third is a ballad about the Chartist
riots at Newport adorned with a wonderful picture of askirmish in a wood apparently and not in the streets; but
this slight departure from fact was of no moment and theIllustration was thought to be a great success.

Another witness to the practice was Thomas Holcraft (17451809), later an actor and writer, who was cut off from books when
his family became wanderers, selling small items in the countryside.
He was able to refresh his reading skills through encounters withbroadsides, including one mentioned by Clare, “Even the walls of
cottages and little alehouses would do something, for many of themhad old English ballads, such as Death and the Lady, and Margaret’s
Ghost, with lamentable tragedies, or King Charles’s golden rules
occasionally pasted on them.”ῌ
῎

ῌ 16 ῌ

In addition to homes and public houses, workplaces, notably thelooms of weavers, were also decorated with broadsides. In the late1830’s, Samuel and Ana Maria Hall toured Ireland extensively and,in Dublin, reported being invited to see a typical hand-loom in “theLiberties”, an overcrowded and impoverished area of the city.ῌ
῍
We observed that the frame of the loom was stuck over inmany places with ballads; indeed we have seldom entered aweaver’s room without perceiving a similar display; andthe songs so fixed are generally pretty sure indexes to theopinions of the owners. In Dublin such scraps were chiefly
political; in the north they were more general, and a number of old Scottish songs were to be found in the mostprominent situations.

FAIRS
The sale of broadside ballads at local fairs was an important
aspect of the rural trade (see below in this Appendix). Alfred Williams, who collected folk songs in the Upper Thames Valley shortly
after the turn of the twentieth century, recorded memories of theballads sellers at the rural fairs near Swindon, and how importantthey were in the supplying of music to the countryside.ῌ῎
The schoolmaster remembers when the ballad-singers wentfrom village to village, singing their rhymes, he had helped
to train them when he was a young man. These strolling
minstrels frequented all the feasts, fairs and revels along
the downside, and gave an exhibition of their skill. Theyῌ 17 ῌ

carried bundles of ballad-sheets with them, and sold themto the rustics at one penny each. The old carter of Woolstone declares that hundreds of these sheets were disposedof at a single fair time. The number of singers varied; there
might be four, or no more than two. Very often it was a man
and his wife, and they sang alternately, in response to eachother. The ballads were some grave, some sentimental, andothers comic or satirical. The old carter could only remember two lines of a satirical piece, dealing with the eternal
question of authority in the home. After a proposition,
relating to home rule, had been set forth by the female
singer, the man responded:

I do decline, and you shall find I will the breeches wearῌ

the answer to which was:Oh, no, not I! for I will die, but I will have my share.

..... though the subject matter of this fragment is crude
enough, there can be no doubt but that there was somegood material circulated in this manner. One can readily
understand, from this, how it was that the countryside wasvocal in the old days, since every cottage contained sheetsof the ballads, the airs of which had been taught the people
by the singers at the feasts; they could not fail to make a
deep impression on the villagers.

In another book, Williams estimates that of the six hundredῌ 18 ῌ

songs he had collected in the Thames Valley, only ten or twelve
were of local origin with all the rest being imported via broadsides
printed elsewhere. “We know that enormous quantities of the
sheets were sold up and down the countryside: hundreds, if not
thousands, were commonly disposed of a single fair-time.” He also
describes some of the sellers, “The most famous ballad-singers of theThames Valley, in recent times, were a man and woman, whotraveled together, and each of whom had but one eye. They sang at
all the local fairs, and the man sold the sheets, frequently wetting
his thumb with his lip to detach a sheet from the bundle and hand
it to a customer in the midst of singing.”ῌ
῍Journalist and poet, William Allingham, described four ballad
sellers’ performances at a fair in an unnamed market town in
Ireland in 1852.ῌ
῎ The first is a young woman singing what iscertainly an execution ballad, “The Sorrowful Lamentation of Patrick Donohue” which she renders, “de capo as long as the balladappears to draw attention and custom, and then she will change it
or move off to another part of the fair.” The next is a man singing of
two faithful lovers and an admirer (or, perhaps his shill) in thecrowd exclaims of his performance, “In troth, it’s worth a ha’penny
to hear him go over it, let alone the paper.” The third ballad
described was certainly a political one concerning the Agrarian
Reform movement of the period which advocated tenant farmers’
rights and protested against the rack rents and evictions that were
imposed by the largely Protestant landowners against the largely
Catholic lower classes.ῌ῏ Allingham, truly a man of his class and its
opinions, dismisses the ballad as, “Agrarian politics, this time, andnot of the most wholesome sort.” He describes the performers as,ῌ 19 ῌ

“two female vocalists standing face to face, and yelling down eachother’s throats,” and a purchaser as a “lout” who he fears will spreadthe “ignorance and foolishness” of the verses which he considers“trash.” With the fourth performer, Allingham finds a character
more to his personal and political liking ῌ an inoffensive elderly
man who plays a fiddle to accompany his humorous songs and who
acts the part of a nearly stock, comic Irishman himself. His sheaf ofballads is kept in a large hat during the performance, at the end ofwhich the instrument is tucked under one arm and the man offers
the songs in his hands.

Although fairs are considered to be mainly rural affairs, there
was the London Frost Fair that also featured broadside ballads. The
most notable was in 1683 when the Thames had frozen solid andcarnival booths and amusements were set up on it. On this and lateroccasions, printing presses were actually placed on the ice to run offsouvenir broadsides for sale on the spot to celebrate the event withlines such as:ῌ῍
And sure in former Ages ne’er was found
A Press to print where Men so oft were drowned

By the nineteenth century, a warming climate and the speedingof the river current by the elimination of the old London Bridge hadlong since ended the carnival on ice, but winter was still celebrated
on the banks and with broadsides.ῌ῎
READINGAs an echo of Clare’s poetic shepherd character, there is the realῌ 20 ῌ

life memoir of Dr. Alexander Murray (1775-1813) who began his
working life at the age of seven or eight minding sheep. He was sent
to boarding school for a short while, but fell ill and was returned to
the fields. Of this later period, he recalled, “I was still, however,attached to reading, printing of words, and getting by heart ballads,of which I had procured several .... About this time, and for years
after, I spent every sixpence that friends or strangers gave me, on
ballads and penny histories. I carried bundles of these in my pockets, and read them when sent to look for cattle...”ῌ
῍ Likewise, when
the child Thomas Holcroft described in the Appendix section “Decoration” above was searching the walls of country alehouses, he wasdriven by his hunger for words to read rather than songs to sing.

It must not be forgotten that, unlike sheet music, broadsides
almost never contained any written music to accompany the lyrics
printed on the sheet. To be sure, there are often directions on them
indicating the tune a particular song is to be sung to, and that titles
beginning “A Parody on .....” or, “An Answer to ....” show that thepresent lyrics are to be sung to the melody of the song being
parodied. Further, some songs such as “Oh Dear What Can the
Matter Be”, which was often used for comic ballads, have distinctive
rhythms or phrasing of the lyrics which soon reveal the intended
tune. However, those exceptions are relatively rare and the myriadof popular songs that did not find permanent places in the community memory continued their printed existence shorn of their music
and lived on as verse alone.

It has already been speculated in the Appendix section “Christmas Sheets” above that the carols that were unknown to a contem-

ῌ 21 ῌ

porary of the period may have been a kind of devotional verse to beread during the holiday season. Other items of reading material
would certainly be anything printed in plain prose such as accounts(real or imagined) of disasters, fires and the like. Similarly, parodies
on Acts of Parliament or Catechisms that could be read for personalenjoyment or performed as recitations did not begin life as anything
like songs.

A more common genre, the murder/ trial/ execution ballads, arelikely to have been used mainly as reading material as the following
account of the sale and use of a broadside that was recorded by
Henry Mayhew.ῌ
῍
One paper-worker told me, that in some small and obscurevillages in Norfolk, which he believed, were visited only byhimself in his line, it was not very uncommon for two poorfamilies to club for 1d. to purchase an execution broadsheet! Not long after Rush was hung, he saw, one evening
after dark, through the uncurtained cottage window,
eleven persons, young and old, gathered around a scantyfire, which was made to blaze by being fed a few sticks. An
old man was reading, to an attentive audience, a broadsheet of Rush’s execution, which my informant had sold tohim; he read by the fire-light, for the very poor in thosevillages, I was told, rarely lighted a candle of a springevening, saying that “a bit o’ fire was good enough to talkby.” The scene must have been impressive, for it had evidently somewhat impressed the perhaps not very susceptible mind of my informant.

ῌ 22 ῌ

It is impossible to quantify what part of the material printed onbroadsides was treated as reading rather than singing material, but
it is certainly greater than would appear at first sight. In the view ofthe writer of “Street Ballads” in 1861, “Ballads still form an important, perhaps the chief part of the reading of a large class of ourpopulation.”ῌ
῍ Another, writing in 1913, looked back into the history of the ballad singers of Ireland.ῌ
῎[ In] the broad-sheets that the ballad-singer carried aroundwith him were not merely memoranda, they were -- andthey are still -- popular anthologies and were bought, kept
and studied as we buy, keep and study books of poetry. One
finds on them pieces that it would be impossible to sing -the ballad of Chevy Chase and other pieces as lengthy as
the Passion of our Lord, or on the controversies between
the Catholic and Protestant churches.”

RECITATIONIn John Clare and the Folk Tradition, George Deacon makes thestrong and important point that, although it is often assumed thatballads were a sung medium, they were also recited. Not only do wehave Clare’s father performing in this manner, but also Clare recalls
hearing several other ballads so treated.ῌ῏ At the other end of thesocial scale, the political diarist, Charles Greville, recorded a recitation of sorts by the distinguished historian Lord Macaulay at Prebendal House, the residence of the Prebendary of Westminster
Cathedral in 1840.ῌ
ῐ Macaulay had been gathering ballad materials
for his history of England and, as Greville relates:ῌ 23 ῌ

[ Macaulay] has been employing his busy mind in gathering all the ballads he can pick up, buying strings of them inthe streets, and he gave us an amusing account of thecharacter of this species of literature, repeating lines andstanzas without end. The ballad writers, who may be supposed to represent the opinions and feelings of the masses
for whose delectation they compose, do not, according to
Macaulay, exhibit very high moral sentiments, as they
evince a great partiality for criminals, and are strenuous
opposers of humanity to animalsῌ

Macaulay had not been collecting ballads as songs per se, but ashistorical or social documents. He then took what may have beensung materials at some time in the past and turned parts of theminto a spoken performance for the entertainment of his social circle.
In the case of Clare’s father, we have no idea, of course whether helearned his recitation pieces as recitation or as songs originally, onlythat the spoken performance was a part of his repertoire in entertaining his own social circle.

Rural Trade
The rural market for broadsides was very active and resorted toon occasion by many of the London street sellers.ῌ
῍ Mayhew recorded an interview with one London-based street seller of broadsides who did a considerable amount of “countrywork” and had
traveled some 800 to 1,000 miles through Hartfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk to sell broadsides on the Mannings, ahusband and wife tried and executed in 1849 for murder.ῌ῎ῌ 24 ῌ

In contrast to this ballad seller who specialized in these broadsides on a single subject, the hawker that appears at the door of
Clare’s Village Doctress offers a range of useful household itemswith the printed material, extending from the godly to the bawdy,
as additional luxury purchases. The normal practice for such fulltime country peddlers was to sell and replenish stocks as they went
along, stopping at regional centers along the way. A travelling
broadside seller mentions this practice while on journeys all overEngland.ῌ
῍
A survey of printers’ imprints from one part of the author’s
personal collection shows that provincial (i.e. not London based)
printers often advertised themselves as serving the travellingtrade.ῌ
῎ The following is a sample of such imprints:
Printed and Sold by J. W. Procter, Travellers Printer, 4Engine str. Hull [ L32]
W. MOSS, PRINTER, NEWARK, Travellers Supplies [ L82]
Printed and Sold by I. Sleath, Stony Stratford. --- Shopkeepers and Traveller(s) Supplied on the most reasonable terms.
[ L85]
W. M’CALL, Printer, 4, Cartwright Place, Byrom Street,
Liverpool. --- Shops and Hawkers supplied. [ L195]
John Ford, jun, Printer, Bridge - street, Sheffield. ῌ Travel-ῌ 25 ῌ

lers & the Trade supplied with Childrens’ Books, Memorandums, Hymns, Songs, &c. &c. [ L202]
May be had of J. BENTLEY, Market Street, Bradford. --Travellers’ Supplied [ L240]
On the other hand, the imprints of the London printers thatadvertise directly to “Travelers” are exceptionally rare.῎ῑ The difference in these practices can most likely be laid to the relative sizeof the local markets for broadsides. The huge population of London
was a sufficient market for the metropolitan printers’ output without making any special effort to obtain the custom of rural sellers.
The provincial printers, of necessity, had to reach further afield
than the small towns where they were established.῏ῐFootnotes
ῌ The most easily accessible collection of broadside ballads, andcertainly one of the grandest with holdings of over 30,000
ballads, is that of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It is available
to the public through its website, Bodleian Library Broadside
Ballads, The allegro Catalogue of Ballads. The site provides extensive bibliographical material on individual songs, sheets,
publishers, writers, performers, and a great deal of other information as well as clear images of the broadsides that can beenlarged for detailed examination. The URL for this site is http:// www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ ballads/ ballads.htmῌ
ballads.htm
῍ There is a rich mine of interviews carried out by Henry Mayhew

ῌ 26 ῌ

with street sellers of broadside ballads in London in the middleof the nineteenth century. (Mayhew, Henry, London Labour andthe London Poor, Griffin, Bohn and Company, London, Vol. I,
1861, particularly on pp. 215, 218, 220-230, 233-38, 272-79 and306). In addition, there is also Michael Joy’s article, “Two murders together is never no good to nobody -- Attitudes andmethods of the street sellers of broadside ballads in nineteenth
century England with some reflections on popular tastes”, Faculty Bulletin, Sophia Junior College (Jochi Tanki Daigaku Kiyo),
Hadano, Japan, 1999, pp. 49-124.
ῌ The standard works on James Catnach and John Pitts, the twobest known London publishers/ printers of broadside ballads inthe first half of the nineteenth century, are: Hindley, Charles,
The Catnach Press. A Collection of the Books and Woodcuts ofJames Catnach late of Seven Dials, Printer, Reeves and Turner,
London, 1869; Hindley, Charles, The History of the Catnach Press,
at Berwick-upon-Tweed, Alnwick and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, inNorthumberland, and Seven Dials London, Charles Hindley [ The
Younger] , Booksellers’ Row, St. Clement Danes, Strand, W. C.,
London, 1887; Shepard, Leslie, John Pitts, Ballad Printer of Seven
Dials, London 1765-1844, Private Libraries Association, London,
1969.

Further, the following works by Leslie Shepard are very usefulgeneral studies: The Broadside Ballad: A Study in Origins andMeaning, Herbert Jenkins, London, 1962, and, The History ofStreet Literature, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1973.

ῌ 27 ῌ

Finally, a recent work by Sheila O’Connell, The Popular Print inEngland, The British Museum, London, 1999, is an exceptionallywell written and profusely illustrated work on the broader topic
of popular printed material of the period.
ῌ The seminal text in this process was George Deacon’s John Clareand the Folk Tradition, Sinclair Browne, London, 1983.
῍ It must be stated at the outset that the author of this present
article in no way claims to be an expert on the subject of John
Clare. Rather, this paper is the result of a brief and, necessarily,
shallow survey of materials concerning him and the uses ofbroadside ballads.
῎ In addition to the published works cited in this article, thewebsite, The John Clare Page, (http://
http:// human.ntu.ac.uk/ clare/clare.html), provides a great deal of basic and interesting inforclare.html
mation.
῏ Robinson, Eric, David Powell and Margaret Grainger (eds.), The
Early Poems of John Clare, 1804-1822, Vols. I and II, Clarendon
Press, Oxford, 1989. Vol. I, p. xix.
ῐ Deacon, John Clare and the Folk Tradition, p. 20.
ῑ Robinson, The Early Poems of John Clare, Vol. I, p. xvii, citing E.
Robinson (ed.), John Clare’s Autobiographical Writings, Oxford,
1983, pp. 12 and 82-3.

ῌ 28 ῌ

῍ (Huges, Thomas), “Street Ballads”, National Review, Vol. 13, Octoῌber 1861, p. 400.
῎ Tibble, J. W. and Anne (eds.), The Prose of John Clare, Routledge
ῌ& Kegan Paul, London, 1951, pp. 256-58.
῏ Deacon, John Clare and the Folk Tradition, p. 32.
ῌῐ Tibble, The Prose of John Clare, p. 128.
ῌ
ῑ Robinson, The Early Poems of John Clare, Vol. II, p. 153.
ῌ
ῒ Robinson, The Early Poems of John Clare, Vol. I, pp. 174-75.
ῌΐ Cronin, Richard, “In Place and Out of Place in the MidsummerῌCushion, footnote (8). (Unpaginated article downloaded from The
John Clare Page website noted above in footnote (6), in July,
2001.) The essay was originally published in Goodridge, John
and Simon Kovesi (eds.), John Clare: New Approaches, Helpston,John Clare Society, 2000.
῔ Tibble, The Prose of John Clare, pp. 49-50.
ῌ῕ Tibble, The Prose of John Clare, p. 80. The music was written byῌ
Haydn Corri and sung at Covent Garden by Madame Vestrisvery shortly after it was published in 1820. Robinson, The Early
Poems of John Clare, Vol. I, p. 579, notes to pp. 463-4, The
Meetingῌῌ 29 ῌ

ῒ This is also how Clare refers to Corri’s song when he commentsῌ
on its publication in a letter written on June 10, 1820. Tibble, J.
W. and Anne (eds.), The Letters of John Clare, Routledge & Kegan
Paul, London, 1951, p. 52.
῎ Storey, Mark (ed.), Clare, The Critical Heritage, Routledge &῍Kegan Paul, London and Boston, 1973, pp. 51-2.
῏ The author’s personal collection number [ L102a] . Printer:῍James Catnach. The sheet has no heading and contains two
songs; (a) Here We meet too soon to part, (b) The Beverly Maidand the Tinker. The song title appears in the Catnach Catalog of1832. Shepard, The History of Street Literature, p. 218. The Bodleian Collection has the same sheet῍ Harding B11 (1529), as well as
virtually the same song on two other large Catnach song sheets:
Johnson Ballads fol. 31 and fol. 32. [ Accessed from the Bodleianwebsite noted in footnote (1) above in June, 2001ῌ]ῐ Lloyd, A. L., Folk Song in England, Lawrence and Wishart,
῍
London, 1967, pp. 190-92.
ῑ The broadside publishers stole across a wide spectrum of song῍
writers and poets, major and minor. A case in point is the poet
Eliza Cook (1812-1889), who developed widespread appeal withthe working class audience in 1840-50, but is almost entirely
forgotten and ignored today. One of her most popular pieces,“The Old Arm-Chair”, appeared on a broadside where it was
reprinted intact and with only a few changes in wording that
could very well have been the result of authorized editing. (Theῌ 30 ῌ

author’s personal collection number [ l67b] . Printer: W. Fortey.
No heading and containing two works; (a) Things I Don’t Like toSee, (b) The Old Arm-Chair.) The poem most likely escaped thesevere editing that was inflicted on Clare’s work because Cook’s
original is so very full of the “floaters” and bits of sentiment that
fitted popular tastes. The first verse alone should make thepoint:

I love it, I love it; and who shall dare
To chide me for loving that old Arm-chair?
I’ve treasured it long as a sainted prize;
I’ve bedewed it with tears, and embalmed it withsighs.
‘Tis bound by a thousand links to my heart;
Not a tie will break, not a link will start.
Would ye learn the spell? ῌ a mother sat there;
And a sacred thing is that old Arm-chair.

Leighton, Angela and Margaret Reynolds (eds.), Victorian
Women Poets: An Anthology, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995, p. 177.

Further, although it is purely a matter of speculation, it may bethat the poem was never set to music, but was reprinted simply
as a cheap, easily available copy of a very popular poem that
could be read for personal enjoyment, or memorized for a recitation at a suitable social event. In this way, it was not subjectedto the editing that is often required when a poem is adapted forsinging. See the Appendix section “Christmas Sheets” above onmaterial in broadsides that may have been intended for readingῌ 31 ῌ

rather than as songs. Also see note (26) below for further discussion of Cook’s poems in broadsidesῌ῍ The author’s personal collection number [ A127b] . Printer: John
ῌ
Pitts. The sheet has no heading and contains four songs; (a) Why
are you Wandering Here I pray, (b) Here We Meet Too Soon toPart, (c) The Evening Star, (d) Our Country is our ship. The same
sheet is in the Bodleian Collection: Harding B 11(4182). [ Accessed from the Bodleian website noted in footnote (1) above inJune, 2001ῌ]῎ Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. I, p. 275. Inῌanother interview with a young costermonger (street fruit andvegetable seller) about tastes in drama and music, it was pointed
out, “A song to take hold of us must have a good chorus.” Vol. 1,
p. 15.
῏ Two more of Eliza Cook’s poems (see note (23) above) appear onῌa single broadside sheet. (The author’s personal collection numbers [ A227a] and [ A227f] . No printer. Heading: The Jullien
Songster and containing seventeen songs. This is a ‘long song’,
i.e. a sheet narrower and much longer than usual and containing
far more than the customary 2-6 songs of a standard broadside.
This sheet is made up of pasted-together sections that have theappearance of having been pages of a songbook that were cut
and then reassembled in the ‘long song’ format.) The first poem,“Song of the Haymakers”, has a four line chorus, but inasmuch
as the title styles the work as a song, then it is virtually certainthat this is the form in which Cook wrote it. The second, “Our

ῌ 32 ῌ

Rambles by the Dove”, has no chorus and also has verses oftwenty lines each which very likely makes it a poor candidatefor being set to music. In short, although it is again quite
speculative, these may also be pieces that were to be read rather
than sung.
ῐ Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. I, p. 19.
ῌῑ Hindley, The Catnach Press, p. 11. Much the same information
ῌ
can also be found in Hindley, The History of the Catnach Press,
p. 248. Sheila O’Connell’s reproduction of a Christmas sheet in
The Popular Print in England (figure 6.4, p. 155) shows how
accurate the above description is. Another can be found in
Shepard, The History of Street Literature, p. 185.
ῒ (Huges), “Street Ballads”, pp. 417 and 419.
ῌ῎ Burnett, John, Destiny Obscure: Autobiographies of Childhood,῍
Education and the Family from the 1820s to the 1920s, Alan Lane,
1982. (Reprint, Routledge, 1994, p. 183.)
῏ Shepard, The History of Street Literature, pp. 110-111. (No origi῍
nal source given.) The fact that both Clare and Holcraft mention“King Charles’ Golden Rules” is a good indication that this was avery common broadside decoration. This is confirmed by thewood engraver Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) who observed that
it was a, “constant one in every house.” Bewick, Thomas, Memoirof Thomas Bewick, Frank Graham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1862.
(Facsimile edition, Scolar Press, Ilkley, Yorkshire, 1974, p. 246.)

ῌ 33 ῌ

῍ Hall, Mr. And Mrs. S.C. (Samuel Carter and Ana Maria), Ireland,ῌ
its Scenery, Characters, &c., 3 Vols., How and Parsons, London,
1841-1843, Vol. II (1842), pp. 239-40. The posting of broadsides
at a weaver’s shop is represented pictorially some hundred years
earlier in Hogarth’s, Industry and Idleness (1747). In the firstprint, “The Fellow ‘Prentices at Their Looms”, the broadsides
serve as iconographic commentary on the two main characters.
Whereas Tomas Idle has a sheet titled “Moll Flanders” on hisloom, the Industrious Apprentice has more edifying materials
pinned to a wall, the most prominent of which has to do with
Dick Whittington, an earlier poor apprentice who rose to become Lord Mayor of London. (Burke, Joseph and Colin Caldwell,
Hogarth: The Complete Etchings, Harry N. Abrams, New York,n.d., Plate 203ῌ) Ballad sellers and posted ballads appear in six ofthe twelve prints of this series and are featured in many other of
Hogarth’s works.
῎ Williams, Alfred, Villages of the White Horse, Duckworth & Coῌ,
ῌ
London, 1913, pp. 104-105.
῏ Williams, Alfred, Folk Songs of the Upper Thames, Duckware andῌ
Co., London, 1923. (Reprint, S.R. Publishers, n.p., n.d., pp. 11-12
and 20.)ῐ Allingham, William, “Irish Ballad Singers”, Household Words,
ῌVol. No. 94, 1852, pp. 361-368. The material cited appears on
pp. 361-62.
ῑ This was a problem that would convulse Ireland for decadesῌῌ 34 ῌ

more. Such political ballads were exceptionally popular in Ireland, with one researcher estimating that they made up some 2040% of all the ballads printed in that country. (Zimmerman,
Georg-Dennis, Irish Political Street Ballads and Rebel Songsῌ
University of Geneva, Geneva, 1966, p. 22.) Further, the performance style of two singers facing each other and singing alternateverses of a political ballad was also enduring in Ireland and canbe seen in a sketch by Jack B. Yeats published in 1912. The
surrounding crowd is attentive, smiling and obviously entertained. (Yeats, Jack B., Life in the West of Ireland, Maunsel & Co.,
Dublin and London, 1912, p. 45, “Singing a Political Ballad”) This
book has no written commentary at all, just the reproductions of
the sketches and the author has been unable to trace the origin
or inspiration for the drawing.
῍ “Thamasis’s Advice to the Painter, From Her Frigid Zone: orῌWonders upon the Waters” London: Printed by G. Croom on theRiver of the Thames, n.d. Untitled folio, British Library shelf
mark 1875. d. 6, f. 5.
῎ “Frost Fair, held on the Thames, February, 1814.” Printed & soldῌ
by T. Bachelar, 14, Hackney Road Crescent, London. Catalogue
CXXII, Summer, 1997, Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers, London, item 213. It seems likely that the broadside itself may havebeen printed at the regular establishment, but a small card laid
down with it and noting ‘Printed on the River Thames, Feb. 3,
1814’ may have been printed on the riverside. A comic illustration of the Frost Fair of 1838 by George Cruikshank shows
fairgoers enjoying beer, ninepins, roasted meat and other a-

ῌ 35 ῌ

musements. In one corner a printer and his small job press haveattracted customers who are described in a verse commentaryas, “... people a having their names printed on cards ...”. Cruikshank, George, The Comic Almanack for 1838: An Ephemeris in
Jest and Earnest, Containing “All Things Fitting for such a Work”,
Charles Tilt, London, n.d.
῕ Shepard, The History of Street Literature, p. 112. No originalῌsource given.
῎ Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. I, pp. 280-81.
῍
῏ (Huges), “Street Ballads”, p. 400.
῍
ῐ Colum, Padraic, Broadsheet Ballads, Being a Collection of Irish
῍
Popular Songs, Maunsel & Co., Dublin and London (1913), pp.
xii-xiii. Emphasis in the original.
ῑ Deacon, John Clare and the Folk Tradition, p. 29.
῍ῒ Greville, Charles C. F., The Greville Memoirs (Second Part): A
῍
Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria From 1837 to 1852, Volumes I-III, Longmans, Green and Co., 1885, Vol. II, p. 60.
ΐ Mayhew states that all of them worked the country trade from῍time to time. Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor,Vol. I, p. 222.
῔ Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. I, p. 224. At
῍ῌ 36 ῌ

the end of the venture the seller admitted that, in spite of thelong journey, he would probably have done better out of it if he
had stayed in London.
῏ Hindley, The History of the Catnach Press, p. ix.
ῌῐ This is the “Laing” collection, two bound volumes containingῌ396 broadside sheets that were collected by David Laing, theSignet Librarian. Around 80% of the collection is comprised ofprovincial printers and the remainder of the better-known London publishers.
ῑ Among the 396 sheets surveyed in the Laing collection, thereῌ
were only two. One was printed by Hillat & Martin [ L152] , apartnership about which very little is known. The other [ L223]
was published by H. Such, a very prolific and long-lived printer.
However, a rapid survey of other parts of the author’s collection
showed only one more advertisement for the travelers’ trade bySuch.
῎ There were other forms of distribution in the countryside. For
῍
example, the Northampton Mercury, founded in 1720, also printed
chapbooks and broadsides, and employed men to deliver thepaper in a 40-mile radius on the day of publication. They carriedchapbooks, broadsides and patent medicines, and would accept
orders for books published in London. Deacon, John Clare and the
Folk Tradition, p. 37.

ῌ 37 ῌ

Figure 1
ῌ 38 ῌ

Figure 2
ῌ 39 ῌ