Broadside ballad entitled 'Firing Butter; or, Paddy the Valiant'

Commentary

This ballad begins: 'We sailed from the Downs in a ship called the Lion, / With fifty brass guns our crew could rely on; / Larboard and starboard we had a bold crew / Which no equal number of foes could subgue.' It was priced one penny and published by the Poet's Box, 190 and 192 Overgate, Dundee.

This comic ballad, narrated by a sailor on a ship 'bound for the west', betrays some of the prejudices of its time. Among the crew are two men from minority groups, a Quaker, and an Irishman. Both are figures of ridicule. The Quaker, one of a conservative protestant sect founded in 1647, is mocked for his pious unwillingness to join battle with the French but is redeemed when his life is imperilled and he instinctively begins to fight. The Irishman is satirised more savagely and portrayed as cowardly and stupid. Anti-Irish polemic was common in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Dundee Poets? Box was in operation from about 1880 to 1945, though it is possible that some material was printed as early as the 1850s. Most of the time it had premises at various addresses in Overgate. In 1885 the proprietor J.G. Scott (at 182 Overgate) had published a catalogue of 2,000 titles consisting of included humorous recitations, dialogues, temperance songs, medleys, parodies, love songs, Jacobite songs. Another proprietor in the 1880s was William Shepherd, but little is known about him. Poets? Box was particularly busy on market days and feeing days when country folk were in town in large numbers. Macartney specialised in local songs and bothy ballads. Many Irish songs were published by the Poets? Box ? many Irishmen worked seasonally harvesting potatoes and also in the jute mills. In 1906 John Lowden Macartney took over as proprietor of the Poet?s Box, initially working from 181 Overgate and later from no.203 and 207.

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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