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Broadside ballad entitled 'Good News' |
CommentaryVerse 1: 'If you choose good news attention pay, and don't refuse / To what I say, my list I'll lay before you, if you choose, / As you will find, if you mind, there is plenty of variety, / Up and down in this town of good news.' This song was published by the Poet's Box, Dundee. This song appears to be a pastiche of advertisements taken out by general stores to advertise their wares. The song is more sophisticated in form than the majority of songs contained in broadsides. The opening verse, quoted above, does not have a simple end-rhyme scheme but contains lots of internal rhymes, and sentences whose conventional structure has been subverted. The song also contains spoken interludes, and verses are divided into 'departments', as in a shop. It was clearly a song for public performance, perhaps in a music hall. 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(84a)
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