Tag Archive: 0ballads

German interest in folksongs began in the middle of the eighteenth century, stoked in no small part by the Europe-wide mania for Ossian.  Thomas Percy’s influential Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) was also much admired, and the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, who had been sent a copy by Rudolf Erich Raspe (of Munchausen fame) […]

Something else for the London International Antiquarian Book Fair?  A scarce slipsong ballad, jauntily memorialising Franz Müller’s trial for the murder of City banker Thomas Briggs on a London train. Late in the evening of 9 July 1864, Briggs was attacked in his first class compartment whilst travelling home on the train from Fenchurch Street […]