Audio Companion to "The Broadside Ballad in Early Modern England"
In its seventeenth-century heyday, the English broadside ballad was a single large sheet of paper printed on one side with multiple woodcut illustrations, a popular tune title, and a poem. Inexpensive, ubiquitous, and fugitive--individual elements migrated freely from one broadside to another--some 11,000 to 12,000 of these artifacts pre-1701 survive, though many others have undoubtedly been lost. Since 2003, Patricia Fumerton and a team of associates at the University of California, Santa Barbara have been finding, digitizing, cataloging, and recording these materials to create the English Broadside Ballad Archive.
In this magisterial and long-awaited volume, Fumerton presents a rich display of the fruits of this work. She tracks the fragmentary assembling and disassembling of two unique extant editions of one broadside ballad and examines the loose network of seventeenth-century ballad collectors who archived what were essentially ephemeral productions. She pays particular attention to Samuel Pepys, who collected and bound into five volumes more than 1,800 ballads, and whose preoccupations with black-letter print, gender, and politics are reflected in and extend beyond his collecting practices. Offering an extensive and expansive reading of an extremely popular and sensational ballad that was printed at least 37 times before 1701, Fumerton highlights the ballad genre's ability to move audiences across time and space. In a concluding chapter, she looks to Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale to analyze the performative potential ballads have in comparison with staged drama.
A broadside ballad cannot be "read" without reading it in relation to its images and its tune, Fumerton argues. To that end, The Broadside Ballad in Early Modern England features more than 80 illustrations and directs its readers to a specially constructed online archive where they can easily access 48 audio files of ballad music.
Access to audio files are in the links below.
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Track 1
Erik Bell
“Oh faine would I wive,” also cited in book as “Handprint Ballad,” First Part, Manchester Central Library 2.47, EBBA 36094; sung to “Drive the Cold Winter Away,” by Erik Bell
Page 6
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Track 2
Erik Bell
Stanza 1, sung with no leap in notes, of “Oh faine would I wive,” also cited in book as “Handprint Ballad,” First Part, Manchester Central Library 2.47, EBBA 36094; sung to “Drive the Cold Winter Away,” by Erik Bell
Page 30
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Track 3
Audio fiddle of transcribed recording of stanza 1, sung with no leap in notes, for ballad “Oh faine would I wive,” to “Drive the Cold Winter Away”
Page 30
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Track 4
Stanza 1, sung with leap in notes, of “Oh faine would I wive”; sung to “Drive the Cold Winter Away,” by Erik Bell
Page 31
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Track 5
Audio fiddle of transcribed recording of stanza 1, sung with leap in notes, for “Oh faine would I wive,” to “Drive the Cold Winter Away"
Page 31
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Track 6
Erik Bell
First “Mock-Beggar Hall” ballad (c. 1633–35), Roxburghe 1.252–253, EBBA 30174; sung to “Northern Nancy” (major), by Erik Bell
Page 88
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Track 7
Erik Bell
Stanza 2, lines 5–8, of first “Mock-Beggar Hall” ballad; sung to “Northern Nancy”(major), by Erik Bell
Page 89
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Track 8
Audio fiddle of transcribed recording of stanza 2, lines 5–8, of the first “Mock-Beggar Hall” ballad, sung to “Northern Nancy” (major)
Page 89
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Track 10
Erik Bell
Stanza 2, lines 5–8, of first “Mock-Beggar Hall” ballad; sung to “Damask Rose,” by Erik Bell
Page 93
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Track 11
Audio fiddle of transcribed recording of stanza 2, lines 5–8, of first “Mock-Beggar Hall” ballad, sung to “Damask Rose”
Page 93
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Track 12
Leeza Bautista
Second “Mock-Beggar Hall” ballad (c. 1639–40), Roxburghe 3.218–219, EBBA 30866; sung to “Damask Rose,” lamentably, by Leeza Bautista
Page 95
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Track 13
Erik Bell
Second “Mock-Beggar Hall” ballad; sung to “Damask Rose,” bitingly, by Erik Bell
Page 95
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Track 14
Erik Bell
“The Saylor and his Loue (c. 1624), Pepys 1.422–423, EBBA 20198; sung to “Dulcina,” by Erik Bell
Page 111
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Track 15
Rachel Short
“The Countrey Lasse” (c. 1630), Pepys 1.268–269, EBBA 20124; sung to “That’s the Mother beguiles the Daughter” (standard title: “The Country Lass”), by Rachel Short
Page 121
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Track 16
Rachel Short
Refrain of stanza 1 of “The Countrey Lasse”; sung to “That’s the Mother beguiles the Daughter” (standard title: “The Country Lass”), by Rachel Short
Page 121
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Track 17
Rachel Short
Audio fiddle of transcribed recording of refrain of stanza 1 of “The Countrey Lasse”; sung to “That’s the Mother beguiles the Daughter” (standard title: “The Country Lass”), by Rachel Short
Page 122
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Track 18
Erik Bell
First “Mock-Beggar Hall” ballad (c. 1633–35), Roxburghe 1.252–253, EBBA 30174; sung to “Northern Nancy” (minor), by Erik Bell
Page 132
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Track 19
Erik Bell
Stanza 2, lines 5–8, of first “Mock-Beggar Hall” ballad; sung to “Northern Nancy” (minor), by Erik Bell
Page 133
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Track 20
Audio fiddle of transcribed recording of stanza 2, lines 5–8, of first “Mock-Beggar Hall” ballad, sung to “Northern Nancy” (minor)
Page 133
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Track 21
Erik Bell and Helena Harlow
“Loues Solace,” Roxburghe 1.202–203, EBBA 30139; sung to “Damask Rose,” by Erik Bell and Helena Harlow
Page 135
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Track 22
Helena Harlow
Stanza 15, lines 5–8, of “Loues Solace”; sung to “Damask Rose,” by Helena Harlow
Page 135
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Track 23
Audio fiddle of transcribed recording of stanza 15, lines 5–8, of “Loues Solace”; sung to “Damask Rose”
Page 135
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Track 24
Erik Bell
“Greensleeves,” from earliest extant text, printed and published by Richard Jones, A Handeful of Pleasant Delites . . . by Clement Robinson and Divers Others, 2nd ed. (London: 1584); reprinted by Hyder E. Rollins, ed., A Handful of Pleasant Delights (1584) . . . (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924); sung to “Greensleeves,” by Erik Bell
Page 233
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Track 25
Erik Bell
“The Re-Resurrection of the Rump,” 1659, Bridgewater Collection, Huntington HEH 133299, EBBA 32128; sung to the shortened and Dorian version of “Greensleeves” (sung in major), titled on the ballad sheet after a tradesman ballad: “To the Tune of the Blacksmith.” The Blacksmith’s ballad’s refrain, repeated in this ballad, is another renaming of the same tune: “Which Nobody can Deny”; sung by Erik Bell
Page 237
