The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #120379   Message #2619400
Posted By: Brian Peters
27-Apr-09 - 05:46 AM
Thread Name: Riddle Songs??
Subject: RE: Riddle Songs??
Thanks for the link to the broadside, SS. Those last verses are indeed low doggerel, and of course their presence in a broadside, even a 17th century one, doesn't guarantee their authenticity. In the case of the 1657 broadside that's the earliest known copy of 'James Harris' (aka The Demon Lover), it's been argued pretty convincingly that much of the text (which concludes with a number of moralizing verses even more cringeworthy than the above) is hack scribbling grafted on to an older, traditional version. In describing 1A as "a modern perversion", FJC seems to have taken a similar view about 'Riddles Wisely Expounded'.