Street

still pass a "screever" (if that be his proper name), pensively sitting on the pavement in the midst of his pictures of whole mackerel, halved salmons, ships, and moonlight scenes. musicians may be found at every corner, from the full unwashed German band and nigger melodist, to the poor Italian boy with his broken-winded hurdy-gurdy. Street conjurors and tumblers have of late been rather on the increase, and the ever-young Mr. Punch still commits and chuckles over his series of crimes, and defies the terrors of the visible and invisible world, to the untiring delight and solace of the appreciating British public.

It does not occur to one readily why the new police and the march of intellect should entirely tolerate other caterers for the amusement and edification of the frequenters of our thoroughfares, and yet should be hostile to the lineal descendant of the ancient minstrel. As long ago as the Tudor times, no doubt "minstrels" were styled "ministers of the devil," and were classed with the "sturdy rogues" to whose amendment, by means of pillory and whipping-post, our fathers seem to have paid much attention. But having survived Tudor statutes, and come down to our own time, we cannot see why the ballad-singer should give way before advancing civilisation sooner than the professors of the other humble branches of the Fine Arts above alluded to. But so it is; and though we can still find the professors of these in certain favourite pitches-if not on Monday, then on Tuesday or Wednesday,-when and where, in what favoured streets, at what auspicious hours, can we make equally sure of hearing a ballad-song in the good old style? Those two somewhat shabby companions, with voices of brazen twang, walking slowly down the sides of some quiet but not out-of-the-way thoroughfare, their hands filled with broad-sheets, their eyes keenly glancing round for every possible owner of a spare half-penny, and making the whole neighbourhood ring with their alternate lines and joint chorus of some unspeakable ditty, sung to a popular air, with variations imported on the spur of the moment,―alas, where are they gone? We ourselves have only heard two ballads sung in the streets (both near Clare Market) in the course of this year, and each time the performer was alone. He seemed to sing as conscious of his latter end, and "mindful of a better day," which both his voice and habiliments might easily have seen. More down in luck than even Scott's Last Minstrel, he had not even an orphan boy to carry his ballads. We committed the extravagance of paying a penny for each of our ballads on these two somewhat sad occasions, and passed on. The investment was not a good one; our purchases proved so feeble that we have not yet assigned them any place in our collection.

If the ballad-singer is disappearing from our streets, as would

seem to be the case, we may be excused for giving him a parting notice in consideration of his past career. We therefore propose to spend an hour with such readers as will follow us amongst our street ballads; but we should be very sorry to take them with us on false pretences. Let us say, therefore, at once, that we can promise them nothing either very wise or very witty. They will scarcely find a gleam of poetic power to repay them for weltering in whole seas of slip-slop. Neither will they much increase their store of available knowledge of "things not generally known" by accompanying us. We have not got the statistics of the whole ballad business in all its branches nicely done up and labelled in packets, and ready to be carried off and added to any person's stock of facts. Such glimpses of light on the subject as have come to us we will impart, but it must be on the understanding that we do not guarantee their accuracy, for we know too well the unreliable nature of many of our sources of information. In short, after years of familiarity with modern street ballads, and of acquaintance (for our relations have never risen to intimacy) with several of the persons engaged in the profession, we are still in a state of much uncertainty upon the subject generally. We live in a mysterious haze, which is not without attraction to us personally, and which we should not altogether rejoice in having to surrender to Mr. Horace Mann, or any other energetic son of science, who would seize on the whole matter, and reduce it to a tabular form in no time. No; we confess that we have very indistinct notions indeed as to who write the ballads, who buy them, why they buy them, how many are sold, in what places, and under what circumstances. But if there is any reader who is inclined for an autumnal easy-going vacational article, which, if it doesn't improve his mind, will at any rate not call upon him for much intellectual exertion, or hurt his morals, and may amuse him, let him come along fearlessly. We have this further to urge in favour of our subject. It is one of those windows through which we may get a glimpse at that very large body of our fellow-citizens of whom we know so little; and a better reason we do not care to find or to give. In our opinion there can be no better; one half of our world knows nothing of how the other half is living, what it thinks about, reads, takes pleasure in. We have no idea how the events which interest us are looked on by the half to which we do not belong. Any thing that will help us to a fuller knowledge in these matters must be very good for us; and reading street ballads will do something, if not much, towards it: for they are almost all written by persons of the class to which they are addressed; and the very sameness of them, the family likeness which runs through each separate branch of them, shows that they are

adapted to and meet the wants and views of that class. Let any reader of the National Review invest sixpence in the first dozen he can lay his hands on, and, after perusing them, just consider for a minute the enormous gulf which must lie between the thousand buyers and readers of Tennyson, and the tens of thousand serious buyers and readers of these broad-sheets, and we believe that several new thoughts will be suggested to him. We are strictly within the mark in saying tens of thousands; for though ballad-singing is dying out in London, and the broadsheet ballad business generally is not what it used to be, it is still enormous.

Ballads still form an important, perhaps the chief part of the reading of a large class of our population. One London firm alone, the successors of Catnach the Great, have on stock half a million of ballads, more than 900 reams of them; and even in these degenerate days, when a ballad makes a real hit, from 20,000 to 30,000 copies of it will go off in a very short time. Then it finds its way into a book for town consumption. The chief circulation of the broad-sheet is in the country, where the conservative instinct is strong in this as in all other matters. The penny song-books, which have to a great extent superseded the broad-sheet in London, are not valued in the shires. "They hold too much," we have been told; "the country people consider them too big, sir, and that it can't be all correct that's in them. So they like the sheet better, that they've been used to."

Now let us turn to the ballads themselves. We do not propose to notice any which we have not ourselves found in circulation; but before coming to strictly contemporary productions, we must say a few words about those older ones, which every ballad-fancier must have found scattered about England. The best of the well-known old ballads we have never met with; but several of the inferior ones are still in broad-sheet. We have bought "Barbara Allen," "Gilderoy," "Lord Thomas and Lady Eleanor," and several Robin-Hood ballads, within the last few years, the text of which differs very slightly from the versions in Percy's Relics, and other collections. Besides these, we have come across several local narrative ballads, some of considerable length, such as "Jemmy and Nancy of Yarmouth," and the "Berkshire Lady," in parts, and running to some 200 lines each; others much shorter. The following is a specimen of these latter. We give it in two versions: the first is copied from the broadsheet; the second is in the words in which we learnt it by heart from hearing it often sung in our youth. The variations are curious, and worth remarking. We have found many other instances of ballads thus adapted in different counties. Some

times the metre is entirely changed, an expression only remaining the same here and there.

“The Three Butchers.

It was Ips, Gips, and Johnson, as I have heard many say,
They had five hundred guineas, all on a market-day;
As they rode over Northumberland, as hard as they could ride,
O hark, O hark,' says Johnson, I hear a woman cry.'
Then Johnson, being a valiant man, a man of courage bold,
He ranged the woods all over, till this woman he did behold.
'How came you here?' says Johnson, how came you here, I pray?
I am come here to relieve you, if you will not me betray.'

'There has been ten swaggering blades, has hand and foot me bound,
And stripped me stark naked, with my hair pinn'd on the ground.'
Then Johnson being a valiant man, a man of courage bold,
He took his coat from off his back, to keep her from the cold.
As they rode over Northumberland, as hard as they could ride,

She put her fingers in her ears, and dismally she cried;

Then up starts ten swaggering blades, with weapons in their hands,
And riding up to Johnson, they bid him for to stand.

'It's I'll not stand,' says Ipson; then no indeed, not I.'

Nor I'll not stand,' says Gibson; 'I'd sooner live than die.'
Then I will stand,' says Johnson, 'I'll stand the while I can ;

I never yet was daunted, nor afraid of any man.'

Then Johnson drew his glittering sword with all his might and main,
So well he laid upon them, that eight of them were slain;

As he was fighting the other two, this woman he did not mind,
She took the knife all from his side, and ripp'd him up behind.

'Now I must fall,' says Johnson, 'I must fall unto the ground;
For relieving this wicked woman, she gave me my death-wound.
O base woman, O base woman, what hast thou done?
Thou hast killed the finest butcher that ever the sun shone on.'
This happened on a market-day, as people was riding by,
To see this dreadful murder, they gave the hue and cry.
It's now this woman's taken, and bound in irons strong,
For killing the finest butcher that ever the sun shone on."

"THE JOLLY BUTCHERS.

Ther' were three jolly butchers,

Three butchers gay and free,
Ther' was Hillson, ther' was Gillson,
And Johnson he made three.

Now as they rode along the road,
Their money for to pay,
'Lord save our lives,' says Johnson,
'From evil company.'

"O gentlemen, kind gentlemen,
Pray pass not by in scorn;

For 'tis fie upon the weary day
As ever I was bru.

D D

They whip-pèd me, they strip-pèd me,
My hands and feet they bound,
And left me here all naked

With my apron to the ground.'

Now Johnson was a valiant man,
And the cold he did not mind;
So he stripped his coat from off his back,
To keep her from the wind.

Now as they rode, a looking out
So sharp of either hand,

Three men they jumped from out a hedge,
And called on them to stand.

'I'll stand, I'll stand,' says Johnson,
'I'll stand as long as I can ;

For I was never yet afeard
Of any mortal man.'

Now Johnson was a valiant man,
And his bullets he let fly;
He killed two out of the three,
The tother runned away.

Now as they rode along the road
As vast as they could ride,
She boldly came to Johnson,
And ripped him in the side.

I falls, I falls,' says Johnson;
'I falls unto the ground;
For I believe, within my heart,

She's gi'n me my death-wound.'"

In coming to the purely modern ballad, we must give precedence to those which have to do with great crimes. They are by far the most numerous, and are bought with singular eagerness. There is no great criminal of any note in our day who has not been the subject of several ballads. And these are all of one character. They are almost always printed on a sheet to themselves. If the prisoner made a confession, it is given either at the head or foot of the sheet, but no other verses are printed on the same sheet; whereas in most other cases a song, or a second ballad, is stuck in the corner, to make up the money's worth. The family likeness, of which we have spoken already, will be plain at once to the reader from the selections we give from the first two or three which come to our hand.

"A new Song on the recent Poisoning-case with which William Palmer stands charged" begins:

"Come, all good people, pay attention

Unto these lines that I indite,

Of cruel murders I will mention,

That will fill your mind with fright: