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Broadside ballad entitled 'Norah Magee' |
CommentaryVerse 1: 'Norah, dear Norah, I cant live without you, / What made you leave me to cross the wide sea / Norah, dear Norah, oh! why did you doubt me / The world seems so dark and so drearly to me? / Why from old Ireland have you been a ranger / Why have you chosen the wide world to roam / Why did you go to the land of the stranger, / And leave your own Barney alone, all alone?' This song was published by the Poet's Box, 190 & 192 Overgate, Dundee. Broadside ballads on the subject of love lost were quite common. This example is narrated by 'Barney', whose sweetheart Norah Magee has left him and their native Ireland to travel the world. The song is a plea to Norah to return. Quite a number of the broadside ballads in the National Library of Scotland's collection are set in Ireland or about Ireland. This probably reflects the high levels of Irish migration to Scotland that took place during industrialisation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 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. Early ballads were dramatic or humorous narrative songs derived from folk culture that predated printing. Originally perpetuated by word of mouth, many ballads survive because they were recorded on broadsides. Musical notation was rarely printed, as tunes were usually established favourites. The term 'ballad' eventually applied more broadly to any kind of topical or popular verse.
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Probable period of publication:
1880-1900 shelfmark: L.C.Fol.70(86b)
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