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Broadside ballad entitled 'The Storm on the Paisley Canal' |
CommentaryThis ballad begins: 'Pray look on this victim of Cupid, / Tae my tale of woe give an ear, / As sure as death I'm knocked quite stupid, / I'll gang wrang in the head tae, I fear'. It could be purchased from the Poet's Box of the Overgate, Dundee, and was priced at one penny. The narrator of this rather sad, but intentionally humorous, tale alternates between verse and spoken form to recount the tragic details of his short voyage aboard the steamship, the 'Bumbee'. After a string of unfortunate events, the narrator appears inconsolable when he finally loses his sweetheart to the captain of the steamship. The name of the accompanying melody is not provided on this sheet, only that the song was to be sung to the original tune. This suggests that the song was already well known to people before its appearance here. 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.
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Probable period of publication:
1880-1900 shelfmark: RB.m.143(052)
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