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Source: London Labour and the London Poor Henry Mayhew (1861) Of Street Ballads on a SubjectThere is a class of ballads which may with perfect propriety be called street ballads, as they are written by street authors for street singing (or chaunting) and street sale. These Ballads on a Subject are always on a political, criminal, or exciting public event, or one that has interested the public, and the celerity with which one of them is written, and then sung in the streets, is in the spirit of these railroad times. After any great event, a ballad on the subject is often enough written, printed, and sung in the street, in little more than an hour. Of course there is no time for either the correction of the rhymes or of the press; but this is regarded as of little consequence - while an early start with a new topic is of great consequence, I am assured; yes, indeed, both for the sake of meals and rents.All the street lays quoted as popular have a sort of burthen or jingle at the end of each verse. I was corrected, however, by a street chaunter for speaking of this burthen as a jingle. It's a chorus, sir, he said. In a proper ballad on a subject, there's often twelve verses, none of them under eight lines, - and there's a four-line chorus to every verse; and, if it's the right sort, it'll sell the ballad. I was told, on all hands, that it was not the words that ever made a ballad, but the subject; and, more than the subject, - the chorus; and, far more than either, - the tune! To select a tune for a ballad, is a matter of deep deliberation. To adapt the ballad to a tune too common or popular is injudicious; for then, I was told, any one can sing it - boys and all. To select a more elaborate and less-known air, however appropriate, may not be pleasing to some of the members of the school of ballad-singers, who may feel it to be beyond their vocal powers; neither may it be relished by the critical in street song, whose approving criticism induces them to purchase as well as to admire. They are unsparing satirists, who, with a rare impartiality, lash all classes and all creeds, as well as any individual. One man told me that, eleven years ago, he himself had worked, in town and country, 23 different songs at the same period and on the same subject - the marriage of the Queen. They all sold, - but the most profitable was one as sung by Prince Albert in character. It was to the air of the `Dusty Miller;' and it was good, said the ballad-man, because we could easily dress up to the character given to Albert.
Then come the elegies. The verses which bewail the `Death of H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge' begin
The third class of street-ballads relates to fires. The one I quote, `On the Awful Fire at B. Caunt's, in St. Martin's-lane,' is preceded by an engraving of a lady and a cavalier, the lady pointing to a column surmounted by an urn.
In a subsequent stanza are four lines, not without some rough pathos, and adapted to move the feelings of a street audience. The writer is alluding to the grief of the parents who had lost two children by a terrible death:
I find no difference in style between the ballads on a subject of to-day, and the oldest which I could obtain a sight of - except that these poems now begin far less frequently with what at one time was as common as an invocation to the Muse - the invitation to good Christians to attend to the singer.
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