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Broadside ballad entitled 'Oor Maggie's got a Bairn' |
CommentaryThis ballad begins: 'While taking a crack ower a guid social drap, / In a public-house near to the station / Blawing up their heads about my great deeds, / And other important things o' the nation'. It was published in Dundee by the Poet's Box. The ballad uses a slightly comic style to tell what is really quite a serious tale. In this song an expectant father is drinking with his friends when he is told his wife has gone into labour, and it is an 'unco fat bairn'. He runs home and realises he must fetch the midwife or his wife will die. It is never revealed whether mother and child survive the ordeal. 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(28a)
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