Commentary
This ballad begins: 'Not a sob was heard, not a sorrowful moan, / As his corse to 'the coffin' we hurried'. There are two separate sets of notes: the first on the text itself and the second on the first note. This broadside admirably illustrates the process by which many of these examples survive today. There is no contextual information given in the original publication, but someone has purposely collected the sheet and commented on the content. These comments are useful as they explain many of the now outdated references on the sheet. The sheet has then fallen into the hands of a second person who, again, has chosen to collect and write notes on the page - this time about the first collector. It is unusual to find such a potted, if still quite limited, history of a broadside's life.
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