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Broadside ballad entitled 'A Cronie o' Mine' |
CommentaryVerse 1: 'Come saddle your bit neddy and ride your way down, / About a mile and a half to the next burgh town. / There's ane, an auld blacksmith, wi' Janet his wife, / And a queerer old cock ye ne'er seen in yer life.' This sheet was sold by the Poet's Box of Dundee. The narrator of this ballad mentions many of his friends, such as 'Dominic Davie' and 'Robin the ploughman', singing the praises of each of them. It is a simply structured piece, consisting of ten quatrains with an A-A-B-B rhyming structure. No tune is given, although it would almost certainly have been sung to an old, popular air. It is not clear what the connection between the different Poet?s Boxes were. They almost certainly sold each other?s sheets. It is known that John Sanderson in Edinburgh often wrote to the Leitches in Glasgow for songs and that later his brother Charles obtained copies of songs from the Dundee Poet?s Box. There was also a Poet?s Box in Belfast from 1846 to 1856 at the address of the printer James Moore, and one at Paisley in the early 1850s, owned by William Anderson. Broadsides are single sheets of paper, printed on one side, to be read unfolded. They carried public information such as proclamations as well as ballads and news of the day. Cheaply available, they were sold on the streets by pedlars and chapmen. Broadsides offer a valuable insight into many aspects of the society they were published in, and the National Library of Scotland holds over 250,000 of them.
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Probable period of publication:
1880-1900 shelfmark: L.C.Fol.70(33a)
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