The Common Muse [antikvár]

NOTE ON THE TEXTS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The texts of the ballads in this collection reproduce the spelling and punctuation of the original broadsides, manuscripts and old editions, with the following exceptions: (i) Obvious misprints have been corrected. (ii) Punctuation has occasionally been altered, but only when it seemed likely to interfere with the sense for the modern reader, (iii) The modern s has been substituted for the old long f and the modern usage followed in the use of the letters u, v, i and j. AU editorial emendations are indicated by triangular brackets: The editors wish to thank Mr G. R, Hibbard for reading the introduction in typescript and making valuable suggestions which they have been glad to adopt; Dr David Daiches for the loan of his copy of the otherwise unobtainable Merry Muses of Caledonia; Mr M. Tarlton, to whose excellent memory they owe much of the contents of the Appendix to this work; the Duke of Portland for kindly allowing them to use his MSS. in Nottingham University Library; and Mr Stephen Sedley for invaluable assistance with the Discography. They also acknowledge the kind permission given by the following pubhshers for the reprinting of copyright texts: Mr M. J. Graham, of the Notts Free Press, for kindly providing us with photographs of two early nineteenth-century broadsides; the Nonesuch Library Ltd for a poem from their edition oi Blake's Poetry and Prose; Country Life Ltd for permission to reprint The Bishop's See and My Master and I from Victorian Street Ballads, edited by W, Henderson; the Cambridge University Press for permission to reproduce four poems from The Pepysian Garland and o