Turning to 'Cupid the Pretty Ploughboy', as sung by Pardon,

First off it has a change from first to third person, which makes it unusual, some people say ballads are traditionally third person narratives.

Secondly it has literacy built into it as both the female character and the ploughboy are literate. The ploughboy sent a 'neat' reply to the letter sent by the woman. I thought that was interesting though I'm not sure what to make of it.

There is a web site seeming to be written by John Howson which says that Sabine Baring-Gold thought it came from a black-letter broadside of about 1670. It also says it was on a number of other broadsides.

But whatever the ultimate origin of the song, for me the references to classical mythology in that song seem to demonstrate links between songs sung by 'traditional' singers and literate traditions, quite apart from the references to literacy of both characters in the Pardon version.

Roud refers to a book by Adam Fox about oral and literate culture 1500 to 1700 and which seems to have a section on ballads. What can people tell us about this book?

Re-reading Roud I was interested to see how much evidence there was for people pasting ballads onto walls. Perhaps the written documents were seen as desirable artifacts even by those who had to wait for somebody literate to come by and decipher them. I believe that the modern 'stigma' attaching to non-literacy is just that, 'stigma', so likely there would have been no 'shame' in asking whoever was literate to decipher something.

They only plough once a year: the ploughboy would have had to find other tasks for the rest of a year. However often there is labelling of people 'ploughboys' in songs seems odd, it could not have been a full time job.