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Broadside ballad entitled 'Miss Hooligan's Christmas Cake' |
CommentaryVerse 1: 'As I sat at my windy one evening, / The letter man brought unto me / A little gilt edged invitation, / Saying, Gilhooly, come over to tea. / Sure I knew that the Hooligans sent it, / So I went just for old friendship's sake, / And the first thing they gave me to tackle / Was a piece of Miss Hooligan's cake.' The text beneath the title reads: 'Sung by Harry Melville and J.M. Oates with success.' The song was published by the Poet's Box, 10 Hunter Street, Dundee, priced one penny. This comic ballad describes a monstrous Christmas cake that poisons everyone who eats it. Although the broadside was apparently published in Dundee, some surnames and phrases in the ballad suggest that it is about a group of Irish acquaintances. The large number of Irish-themed broadsides found in Scotland reflects the high level of Irish migration to Scotland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a major urban industrial centre, Dundee become home to a large Irish migrant population. 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(88a)
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