Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America: The Interface between Print and Oral Traditions

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Contents: Introduction, Steve Roud
Was there really a 'mass extinction of old ballads' in the romantic period?, David Atkinson
Birmingham broadsides and oral tradition, Roy Palmer
The Newcastle song chapbooks, Peter Wood
Forgotten broadsides and the song tradition of Scots travellers, Chris Wright
Welsh balladry and literacy, Ffion Mair Jones
Ballads and ballad singers: Samuel Lover's tour of Dublin in 1830, John Moulden
Henry J. Wehman and cheap print in late 19th-century America, Norm Cohen
'I'd have you to buy it and learn it': Sabine Baring-Gould, his fellow collectors, and street literature, Martin Graebe
The popular ballad and the book trade: 'Bateman's Tragedy' versus 'The Demon Lover', David Atkinson
Mediating Maria Marten: comparative and contextual studies of the Red Barn ballads, Tom Pettitt
'Old Brown's Daughter': re-contextualizing a 'locally' composed Newfoundland folk song, Anna Kearney Guigne
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In recent years, the assumption that traditional songs originated from a primarily oral tradition has been challenged by research into ’street literature’ - that is, the cheap printed broadsides and chapbooks that poured from the presses of jobbing printers from the late sixteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth. Not only are some traditional singers known to have learned songs from printed sources, but most of the songs were composed by professional writers and reached the populace in printed form. Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America engages with the long-running debate over the origin of traditional songs by examining street literature’s interaction with, and influence on, oral traditions.

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