Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads Project

Verses in Vogue with the Vulgar

Love song about murder:

“Love Song about Murder” is the story of a resourceful woman who agrees to plead for the life of a rich nobleman who then marries her after his pardon. It was registered in 1594 as “A most sweete songe of an English merchant that killed a man in Guidine and was for the same judged to lose his head and howe in th ende a mayden saved his lyfe by T[homas] Deloney.” Other early titles include “The Merchant,” “The Rich Merchantman,” and other similar titles. Thomas Deloney (ca. 1543-ca. 1600) was a ballad writer and pamphleteer who wrote with considerable humor, portraying the life of the lower and middle classes in Elizabethan times (Simpson 602-4).

The song was also printed in the 1830s on a broadside by Leonard Deming, and survived in tradition, collected in New York state with the odd title “The Dens of Ireland” (“American Broadsides” 1:4360; Cazden, Haufrecht, and Studer, Folk Songs 225-26; Cazden, Haufrecht, and Studer, Notes 47).

Additional Metadata

Date

1810-1814

Place of Publication

Boston.

Publisher

Coverly, Nathaniel, 1775?-1824, printer.

Subjects

Murder
Love
Executions and executioners
Pardon
Marriage

First Line

Noble lord in Chester of fame and great renown.

Identifiers

BIB ID: 280940
OCLC Control No.: (OCoLC)ocm79304205
OCLC Control No.: (OCoLC)ocn191461269
Gigi URL: http://gigi.mwa.org/netpub/server.np?quickfind=280940&sorton=filename&catalog=catalog&site=public&template=results.np
Ford, W.C. Thomas ballads, 154
AAS General Catalog URL: http://catalog.mwa.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=280940

Physical Dimensions

34 x 19 cm.

Transcriptions

View transcription using TEI
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Citation

“Love song about murder:,” Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads Project, accessed October 22, 2021, https://www.americanantiquarian.org/thomasballads/items/show/155.