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Broadside ballad entitled 'Don't Let Us Be Strangers' |
CommentaryVerse 1: 'I hate to be unsociable with anyone I meet, / I like someone to chatter to me when I sit down to eat / And if I have to go by train a mile or two away, / Unto my fellow passenger I?m pretty sure to say . . .' Below the title we are told that, 'This popular song can always be had at the Poet's Box, 224 Overgate, Dundee'. The essential message that the narrator of the ballad wishes to convey is that since life is short, we should try to be as friendly and helpful to one another as possible. The list of popular songs at the bottom of this sheet is very interesting, with 'The Iron Horse' ballad being an imaginative nickname for an early rail locomotive. As many ballads were written to commemorate special occasions, such lists often help historians to roughly identify the publication date of broadsides. 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(69b)
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