The Popular Marketing of "Old Ballads": The Ballad Revival and Eighteenth-Century Antiquarianism Reconsidered

Dugaw, Dianne

doi:10.2307/2739027

Cited by 58 publications

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“…Meanwhile, though traditional accounts of the ‘ballad revival’ often take Thomas Percy’s Reliques of English Poetry (1765) as a key point of origin, ballads were a popular choice in many earlier miscellanies, with ‘Chevy Chase’ appearing in collections ranging from the Dryden‐Tonson Sylvae to A Collection of Old Ballads (1723). As Dianne Dugaw and Nick Groom have both shown, this latter collection in particular reveals an enthusiasm for collecting ballads which significantly predates Percy’s much more famous collection. Miscellanies can also offer an insight into the interplay between different kinds of literary expression, functioning, frequently, as a melting pot for drama and prose as well as verse.…”

Section: Miscellanies and Literary Culturementioning

confidence: 89%

Eighteenth‐Century Verse Miscellanies

Batt

2012

Literature Compass

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Thousands of verse collections containing the works of multiple authors were published in the 18th century. This essay offers a guide to recent scholarship on these collections of ‘poems by several hands’. It provides an overview of the many different kinds of miscellany and anthology that were produced, before exploring what these publications might reveal about the 18th‐century literary landscape. It considers what miscellanies and anthologies contribute to our understanding of authorship and anonymity, genre, canon formation and the literary past, women writers, and regionalism and nationalism. It then investigates what these texts reveal about 18th‐century reading practices, and about the workings of the 18th‐century book trade. The essay concludes with an account of an important current research project, the Digital Miscellanies Index.

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Section: Miscellanies and Literary Culturementioning

confidence: 89%

Eighteenth‐Century Verse Miscellanies

Batt

2012

Literature Compass

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“…The Diceys, William and Cluer, printed 'ancient ballads' in chapbooks and broadsides for a popular market. 23 John Clare's song collection included variants of Dicey broadside texts, even though by the second quarter of the nineteenth century such "old ballads" were beginning to sound distinctly dated. 24…”

Section: Ballads and The 'Oral Tradition'mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘I’ll sing you a song and a very pretty one’: Broadsides, ballads and more

Taylor¹

2021

From Mummers to Madness: A Social History of Popular Music in England, c.1770s to c.1970s

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the interpretative (what meaning(s) did these songs have?), all of which make generalization a hazardous venture. 1 Further, while there are various glimpses into the world of popular song, much, particularly performance and audience response, remains unknown, which makes all the more important the 'hard leap of historical understanding [required] to think our way out of modern notions of the place of song in society into a very different situation.' 2 The purpose of this chapter is to consider the range of material, from ballads and broadsides, to chapbook and songsters, as background to the following two chapters which will consider the content of different types of songs and the insights they provide.Although the precise contours are often unclear, singing was a common-place part of daily life. People sang at work, at the plough tail and at the loom, and there were even work songs. People sang at leisure. They sang privately, maybe solitarily, and they sang collectively. They sang in informal settings, not least the local inn or beerhouse, but they also sang in formal settings, some secular, others sacred; and in doing so, they drew from a variety of sources and traditions. But what did they sing? The question can be answered with some confidence in the case of the chapel choir or the choral society but much less so when talking about the ale-house sing-song. Little is known about the repertoires of ordinary men and women. John Clare's father, Parker Clare, allegedly knew more than a hundred songs, which he sang or recited. 3 It is impossible to say how unusual he was, assuming the claim to be correct. Exceptionally, the Copper family of Rottingdean had a repertoire of songs passed down the generations, but more typically, Isaac Bawcombe, a young shepherd at the turn of the nineteenth century, sang 'old songs and ballads he had learnt in his young years -'Down in the Village,' 'The Days of Queen Elizabeth,' 'The Blacksmith', 'The Gown of Green,' 'The Dawning of the Day' and many others.' 4 It is likely that many people had a small range of songs, including one or two 'party pieces' to be sung at special occasions as well as other, well-known pieces to be sung collectively and informally. 5 But how many people were like Clare's friend, Gregory? He was 'fond of amusement and a singer tho his notes was not more varied than that of the cuckoo as he had but 2 Songs one called 'the milking pail' and the other 'Jack with his broom. '' 6

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Ballad, Literary

Jackson-Houlston¹

2012

The Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature

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The ballad becomes self‐consciously literary towards the end of the eighteenth century, at the point at which its oral transmission and constant recreation begin to come under substantial threat from the mobility caused by social change (Stewart 1994). That icon of Romanticism, Lyrical Ballads (1798), implies in its title the loss of a whole mode of oral narrative culture and its reconfiguration with a concentration on personal emotion. For Wordsworth and Coleridge, the ballad was a form that exemplified simple, affecting statement, because of its roots as far back as a supposed medieval past and its links with ordinary, unsophisticated people. However, Wordsworth's explanation in the Preface to the expanded 1800 edition insists that the emotion of the poems gives significance to the action, not vice versa. This puts the emphasis on the lyrical aspect of the collection, marginalizing the narrative that would be central to a modern, folklorist definition of the ballad. Such an emphasis was characteristic of the period, and the modes of generic adaptation practised by Wordsworth and Coleridge were more widespread than their claims and earlier Romantic scholarship give cause to suppose.

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The Popular Marketing of "Old Ballads": The Ballad Revival and Eighteenth-Century Antiquarianism Reconsidered

Cited by 58 publications

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Eighteenth‐Century Verse Miscellanies

Eighteenth‐Century Verse Miscellanies

‘I’ll sing you a song and a very pretty one’: Broadsides, ballads and more

Ballad, Literary

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