G'day terry,

According to Mayhew, when he wrote about the London poor, in 1850, the most common tune used by ballad peddlers to sing their wares was Boulavogue. This was probably because so many Irish had been displaced by the potato blight in Ireland and many of them had gravitated to London.

The broadsides often had no tune given and the sellers would just sing them as best they could ... and the buyers would do the same. The good tunes stuck and come down to us ... and a million lousy ones don't! Once the music hall was going strongly, I think tune names became more common, since many broadsides were now parodies of popular songs.

Regards,

Bob Bolton