Sorry Lighter, I miss-read your post.

"but unfortunately it's worth thinking about."

Not unfortunate at all. The Broadside tradition is clearly interrelated to the cannon of songs collected from source singers at the end of the 19C. I read somewhere, sorry I cannot remember where, that many of the songs collected in the 19C appeared first as Broadsides in the 18C or earlier.

I was just hopping we could come to some concensus about Bert and I think we probably have but it still needs somebody to sum it up.

As for who wrote Broadsides and what happened to the songs and the writers that really is another story that is well worth digging into.

Best of luck I think you have a job for life

Les