"Child's antipathy towards broadsides is perfectly understandable given his background."
Again a red herring Steve – we are not discussing 'why' Child described broadsides as "veritable dunghills", just that he did – you will remember, of course that you cited him as one of your referees!
"These scholars! I don't know! They don't know nuffin! That Professor Child, who was he anyway!"
You really can't rely on these character witnesses, can you?
This is from a paper I gave at one of the several conferences I attended in the 1980s when I was desperately trying to improve the fact that I was "somewhat out of touch with current thinking. About a century behind."
It was published along with other papers in Ian Russell's 'Singer, Song and Scholar in 1986 and it describes our meeting Mikeen McCarthy, a Travelling man who became one of our closest friends and who we recorded over thirty years up to his death in 2005.
We recorded much more on ballad selling and on the passing on of songs up to the 1950s in rural S.W. Ireland – he fill well over 100 tapes in all with songs, stories and information.
I have also included the transcript of the track from our Travellers double CD, 'From Puck To Appleby', where he talks about the act of selling 'The Ballads'.
Sorry about the space taken up by this.
Jim Carroll

One evening, after a long period of doing very little recording, we were drinking in a pub to the west of London when one of the travelers pointed out a man engaged (we thought) in conversation with several other men. We approached the group and found that in fact he was singing to them. We introduced ourselves and asked if he would be prepared to sing for us. He agreed and the following evening we began working with Mikeen McCarthy, work we have not yet completed after eight years.
Mikeen (Little Michael) McCarthy was born fifty years ago in Cahirciveen, a small town on the Inveragh Peninsula in County Kerry in the south west of Ireland. His parents followed the traditional travelling trades: tin-smithing, horse dealing, hawking, chimney sweeping and, like a number of travelling families, spent eight months of the year on the road and rented a house for the winter, thus enabling Mikeen and his four sisters to get a little education. In addition to these trades, Michael McCarthy, senior, spent some time abroad as a soldier in the First World War and as a miner and bare-fist prizefighter in South Wales. Both of Mikeen's parents were singers, his father being in great demand as one, among travellers and in the settled community in Kerry. His mother was an Ullagoner, one of the women who were called on to keen or lament at funerals.
Mikeen took up tin-smithing as his first trade but later became skilled as a caravan builder. Some of the beautiful barrel-topped vans that are now used to haul holidaymakers around the roads in the south west of Ireland were built by him.
During his youth, he worked with his mother at the fairs and markets selling 'the ballads', the song sheets that were still being sold in rural Ireland right into the fifties. These sheets, measuring about 12 inches by 5 inches, were printed on coloured paper and contained the words of one song. The trade was carried on almost exclusively by travellers. The songs appearing on the sheets were by no means all traditional. titles mentioned to us were 'Little Grey Home in the West', 'Smiling Through', 'Home Sweet Home', and 'No Place Like Home', as well as 'Rocks of Bawn', Sailor's Life', 'Betsy of Ballentown Brae', and 'Willie
Reilly and his Colleen Bawn'.
Mikeen was able to describe to us in great detail how these ballads were primed and distributed. Although, as I have mentioned, he had received some education, his writing ability was somewhat limited; his mother is still unable to read and write. They would go into a town or village where a market was to take place and approach a local printer.
The words of a selected song would be recited to the printer who would take them down and an order would be placed for the required number.
In Kerry, where the McCarthys traded, the sheets were illustrated with a picture that related to the song: 'A man's song would have the picture of a man at the top, a woman's would have a woman's head'. This does not appear to have been the case throughout Ireland; in County Clare we have been told that the sheets contained the words only, with no illustration.
When they were printed they were taken around the fairs, usually to the bars, and sold at a penny each, though sometimes, towards the end of the day, they would be sold for less. A seller had to be able to supply tunes for the songs on sale; quite often a transaction depended on this.
Mikeen described how, at a fair in Tralee, a customer was so anxious to learn a song that he pushed a pound note into Mikeen's top pocket every time he sang the song through: 'I went home with eleven pounds that time'.
Attitudes to ballad selling appeared to have differed among travellers.
Athough it was carried out almost exclusively by them, by many it was regarded as no better than begging: 'They thought it was a low trade, but I didn't, I was glad to do it. I still would if I had the chance.' Even Mikeen's parents disagreed about it: 'My mother thought it was okay, but my father didn't like the idea of his songs going on them; if he found out there'd be trouble.'
The songs that were selected for the sheets would depend on where they were to be sold: 'Some would sell well in one place and some in another... If you could get a song that nobody knew in that place, you had a winner.' Quite often Mikeen would be asked if he had any of his father's songs for sale. Such a request would be complied with the next time that place was visited.
The practice of ballad selling appears to have died out some time in the late fifties. One of the last songs to have appeared on a ballad was 'Bar With No Stout – (parody on The Pub with No Beer)'. These ballad sheets, along with the song page in the weekly magazine, Ireland's Own, have exerted a very strong influence, for good or ill, on the singing tradition in Ireland over the last fifty years. We have yet to meet an Irish traditional singer who has not learned songs from them.
We were interested to find that a song entered in the Stationers Register in 1675 was still being sold on a ballad sheet right into the 1950s. Moreover, it is still popular among Irish Travellers today as in example 1 (The Blind Beggar), which was recorded in 1975.   

Selling the Ballads (The Blind Beggar)   Mikeen McCarthy
Well er, around where my father came from like, he was very well known as being a singer, not a singer now for his living like, but a fireside singer, we'll call it, and what we call céilidhing now, going to houses. Well they were very fond of that song where he came from, he'd be like the young people today singing, buying those records, you know. But it got that popular around that area, travelled from parish to parish then; where he got it from I do not know.
So when I used be selling the ballads then like, and my mother, they used ask me, "Have you any of your father's songs?", you know, when we went in to where we were reared now, "Have you the Blind Beggar?", and I used say, "No."
"Why don't you get those printed?", they'd say, "Those are the songs you'd sell, and if you get them printed I'll buy about a dozen of them off you next time I meet you."
So that's how I got them in print then myself. My father write them out for me and I'd go in to the printing office then, then I'd get them printed.
Well they were the songs that did sing, and many a time after I went into the pubs after selling ballads like and things like that and I'd hear all the lads inside on a fair day now, we'll say markets and meetings, well when they'd have a few pints on them, 'tis then you'd hear my songs sung back again out of my ballads.
But I remember one day I was in Listowel Fair and I was selling ballads anyway. So I goes into a pub, I was fifteen years of age then - actually, I never wanted to pack it up, it was ashamed of the ladies I got, you know - but there was an American inside anyway, he wasn't back to Ireland I'd say for thirty years or something, he was saying.
So I sang that song now, The Blind Beggar, and he asked me to sing it again and every time I sang it he stuck a pound note into my top pocket.
He said, "Will you sing again?"
So I did, yeah. The pub was full all round like, what we call a nook now that time, a small bar, a private little bar off from the rest of the pub.
"And, will you sing it again?"
"I will; delighted" again, of course, another pound into my top pocket every time anyway. And the crowd was around, of course, and they were all throwing in two bobs apiece and a shilling apiece and I'd this pocket packed with silver money as well.
So he asked me, "Will you sing it for the last time."
Says I, "I'll keep singing it 'til morning if you want."
I'd six single pound notes in it when I came outside of the pub. I think I sold the rest of the ballads for half nothing to get away to the pictures".

The selling of printed song sheets, 'ballads', as they were known, was still very much a part of life right into the 1950s in rural Ireland. The trade at that time seemed to be fairly exclusively carried out by travellers who could be seen at the fairs and markets singing and selling them.
Not all the songs that appeared on these sheets were traditional; sentimental songs like Smiling Through and There's No Place Like Home, have been mentioned to us as being 'best sellers', and among the last titles to appear was The Pub with No Beer. However, they did have a profound effect on the preservation and circulation of many traditional songs. In Mikeen's case, one of the sources for the songs he sold, such as Bessie of Ballentown Brae andBonny Bunch of Roses, was his father, Michael, who had a large repertoire of traditional songs and stories and was recognised as a singer and storyteller by members of both the travelling and settled communities around Cahirciveen in Co Kerry.
In his youth, Mikeen, along with his mother and other members of the family, sold the ballads around the pubs and fairs of Kerry and he has given us a great deal of valuable information regarding the production and distribution of these, which he started to sell around the age of twelve some time in the nineteen forties.
Ref: Michael McCarthy, Singer and Ballad Seller. Singer, Song and Scholar, Sheffield Academic Press,1986.