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Broadside ballad entitled 'The Gallant Hussar' |
CommentaryVerse 1: 'A damsel possessed of great beauty, / She stood by her own father's gate, / The galleut gallent hussars were on duty, / To view them this maiden did wait; / Their horses were capering and prancing, / Their accoutrements shone like a star, / From the plains they were nearer advancing, / She espied her young gallant Hussar.' This song was published by the Poet's Box, Overgate, Dundee. This ballad is a fairly unremarkable story of a girl who is in love with a soldier named Edwin. The girl, Jane, has vowed to marry Edwin despite being kept locked away from him by her parents for a year. Edwin asks her to consider the risks of being a soldier's wife and of risking her parents' love, but Jane is determined and the two eventually marry. Sentimental, conventional love tales like this were quite common in broadside ballads. 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(84b)
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