The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #159568   Message #3781187
Posted By: Jim Brown
25-Mar-16 - 03:51 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Gosport Tragedy/ Cruel Ship's Carpenter
Subject: RE: Origins: Gosport Tragedy/ Cruel Ship's Carpenter
The Santa Barbara site lists five copies, with facsimiles of four of them, but none of them are an exact match to the American Antiquarian Society one that Richie links too

Two of them look identical, with no mention of the tune, no imprint (unless it has been cropped off), and an illustration showing some men in a rowing boat. A third (British Library, Roxburghe collection) has the same rowing-boat illustration but also names the tune as "PEGGY'S gone over Sea" (as in the broadside Richie links too) and says it is "Printed and Sold at the Printing-Office in Bow Church-Yard, London". The fourth also mentions the tune, but has different illustrations, one of a ship and the other of a murder scene (it looks like a woman strangling a young girl, rather than anything like the murder in the ballad). It has the same Bow Church-Yard imprint. There is no facsimile of the fifth, but according to the citation, it names the tune as "Peg and the Soldier; Peggy's Gone Over Sea with the Soldier" and has no imprint.

The citations on the Santa for the Roxburghe one and one of the two identical ones gives dates as "1728-1763?", but doesn't explain why. (I wonder if 1728 is based on accepting David Fowler's conclusion that the events the ballad is based on took place in 1726, or is it something to do with the Bow Church-Yard imprint?)