The Ballad Partners

Edited by David Atkinson and Steve Roud 

ISBN 978-1-0686406-0-5

£15.00 (+£3.20 p+p). For overseas postage please contact us before paying

The fourth in our series of new essays on aspects of street literature, based on papers presented at the Traditional Song Forum’s annual Broadside Day conference.

Book Contents

• Old Christmas the Dissident? How Father Christmas Developed through Cheap Print; Alex Lyons 
• Cards Spiritualized; Martin Graebe 
• The Soldier Who Prayed with Cards: The Czech Reception, 1800–2020; Jiří Dufka and Marie Hanzelková 
• ‘Small Is Beautiful’: Czech Broadside Ballads; Jiří Dufka and Marie Hanzelková 
• ‘Old Ballads’ in England, c.1730–c.1780; David Atkinson 
• The Genesis of a Genre: Revisiting the Earliest Murdered-Sweetheart Ballads; Thomas Pettitt 
• Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury and ‘King of Poland’, in Broadside Print; Andrew C. Rouse 
• ‘Like a countenance from Mars compounded’: From Goddess to God Routine in Nineteenth-Century Irish Broadsides; Siobhán McElduff 
• John Sheil, Shayle the Poet, Little Sheil: Weaver, Political Firebrand, and Song-maker (c.1783–5 July 1872); John Moulden  
• ‘The Raking Paud(h)een Rhu; or, A Tinker’s Travels’: James Kearney, from Tenement Tinsmith to Music Saloon Star; Catherine Ann Cullen 
• ‘No Irish Need Apply’; Martin Nail

The fourth volume in our series of essays on street literature and cheap print, entitled Father Christmas and the Deck of Cards: Further Adventures in Cheap Print, edited by David Atkinson and Steve Roud. 

It is a collection of eleven essays based on papers presented at the Traditional Song Forum’s annual Broadside Day conference, including an investigation of how the figure of Father Christmas developed in cheap prints, and the surprisingly long history of the song / recitation Cards Spiritualized (or Deck of Cards, as it is usually called nowadays). It turns out that this song might well be older than Father Christmas. 

We always like to include at least one piece on street literature from other countries, and this volume includes two chapters on the Czech Republic – one an introductory essay and one, even more surprisingly, on – yes – Deck of Cards!

Other chapters cover various aspects of Irish traditions and an investigation of the ‘murdered-sweetheart’ ballads, a perennially popular theme in song tradition in Britain for at least 400 years.