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Updated: June 6, 2025
Or is it the costume, the foot-lights, the orange-peel, and the sawdust are they the terms of the immunity? Alas, and alas! I believe they are. Burke said, “The age of chivalry is o’er;” and I believe the age of poetry has gone with it; and if Homer himself were to chant an Iliad down Fleet Street, I’d wager a crown that 964 would take him up for a ballad-singer. But a late case occurs to me.
The boy let loose from the day-school was hurrying home to dinner, his satchel on his back: the ballad-singer was sending her cracked whine through the obscurer alleys, where the baker's boy, with puddings on his tray, and the smart maid-servant, despatched for porter, paused to listen.
The rags of the squalid ballad-singer fluttered in the rich light that showed the goldsmith's treasures, pale and pinched-up faces hovered about the windows where was tempting food, hungry eyes wandered over the profusion guarded by one thin sheet of brittle glass an iron wall to them; half-naked shivering figures stopped to gaze at Chinese shawls and golden stuffs of India.
The boy let loose from the day-school was hurrying home to dinner, his satchel on his back: the ballad-singer was sending her cracked whine through the obscurer alleys, where the baker's boy, with puddings on his tray, and the smart maid-servant, despatched for porter, paused to listen.
But the remarkable thing about this ballad-singer was one of his arms, which, while singing, he somehow swung vertically round and round in the air, as if it revolved on a pivot.
"Perhaps this girl is a very ordinary creature after all a mere street wanderer, coarse and vulgar." But Sir Oswald stopped himself, remembering the refined tones of the voice which he had heard last night the perfect self-possession of the girl's manner. "No," he exclaimed, "she is neither coarse nor vulgar; she is no common street ballad-singer.
Do you respect a rope-dancer, or a ballad-singer? BOSWELL. 'No, Sir: but we respect a great player, as a man who can conceive lofty sentiments, and can express them gracefully. JOHNSON. 'What, Sir, a fellow who claps a hump on his back, and a lump on his leg, and cries "I am Richard the Third"? Nay, Sir, a ballad-singer is a higher man, for he does two things; he repeats and he sings: there is both recitation and musick in his performance: the player only recites. BOSWELL. 'My dear Sir! you may turn anything into ridicule.
Here was the favourite spot of the popular ballad-singer . Here, too, might be seen the swarthy Saracen, with wares from Spain and Afric . Here, the German merchant from the Steel-yard swept along on his way to his suburban home. Here, on some holy office, went quick the muffled monk. Here, the city gallant paused to laugh with the country girl, her basket full of May-boughs and cowslips.
Once, in a time of dearth, I noticed a ballad-singer going through the street hoarsely chanting some discordant strain in a provincial dialect, of which I could only make out that it addressed the sensibilities of the auditors on the score of starvation; but by his side stalked the policeman, offering no interference, but watchful to hear what this rough minstrel said or sang, and silence him, if his effusion threatened to prove too soul-stirring.
None had said anything since we first heard the new-come singing, save that as we went out of the door the ballad-singer clapped me on the shoulder and said: "Was it not sooth that I said, brother, that Robin Hood should bring us John Ball?" The street was pretty full of men by then we were out in it, and all faces turned toward the cross.
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