Potter & Williams Collection on Irish Culture, Broadside Ballads

Item — Multiple Containers

Identifier: 009-04-01

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The collection includes late 19th century Irish and English broadside ballads. Of the total 972 broadsides, the vast bulk were printed in either Cork or Dublin, Ireland. Many of the Dublin broadsides were published by Peter Brerenton. Broadside ballads were printed and sold by ballad singers as well as in street fairs and markets and included the lyrics for popular songs. They were printed on one side of inexpensive paper and often included woodcut illustrations.

Dates

1860 - 1889

Conditions Governing Access

Materials are open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

PPL believes this collection is in the public domain. Users of this item are responsible for determining copyright restrictions.

Biographical / Historical

Alfred Mason Williams (1840-1896) was a journalist, editorial writer and scholar of Irish poetry and folklore. He was born in Taunton, Massachusetts to Lloyd Hall and Prudence King Williams. He attended the Bristol Academy and entered Brown University in 1860. During the Civil War, he enlisted as a private in the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and wrote letters from the front to various newspapers. In 1865, he went to Ireland as a foreign correspondent to report on the Fenian trials for the Boston Post and the New York Herald. He collected Irish broadside ballads which led to his lifelong interest in folklore. He was also interested in Irish poetry and this led to his publication of an anthology of Irish poetry in 1881. In 1875, he was hired as a reporter for the Providence Journal where he wrote editorials. In 1884 he became editor-in-chief of the paper. He started a Sunday edition in 1885 and in it he published poems and articles by Irish writers. He also made the Journal one of the strongest advocates in America for Irish home rule. After his wife died in 1886, he made a second trip to Ireland and met many young talented Irish writers including Katharine Tynan and William Butler Yeats. Williams published much of their work in the Journal and this gave many Americans weekly access to Irish literature. Williams’s ill health due to malaria he contracted during the Civil War led to his retirement from the Journal in 1891 and he died five years later while on a visit to St. Kitts in the Eastern Caribbean. Having no children, he donated his entire estate, appraised at $250,000, to the Providence Public Library.

Extent

.8 Linear Feet (2 manuscript boxes )

Language of Materials

English

Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic

Additional Description

Arrangement

The collection is organized into two series. Series 1 includes Irish broadside ballads; Series 2 includes English broadside ballads. Items are organized alphabetically by song title and have been directly transcribed including spelling and printing errors. In the case of broadsides with multiple songs, they are organized by the primary title. Variations or editions of the same title (obvious enough to be notable without detailed comparison) have unique identifiers. Items that appear to be duplicates are indicated with an alphabetic indicator in the item identifier.

Custodial History

Donated by the estate of Alfred M. Williams upon his death in 1896 as part of the initially named “Alfred M. Williams Collection of Folklore.” Included scrapbooks of ballads collected by the library after the initial bequest including a purchase of three ballads in 1953 from Dana’s Old Corner Bookshop, Providence; purchase of a scrapbook of 40 ballads from William Wreden. A letter from PPL library director in 1967 noted a total of 1,141 Irish broadside ballads mostly printed in Dublin or Belfast and 124 English broadside ballads.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

The bulk of the ballads were collected by Alfred M. Williams. He collected some himself while in Ireland in 1865-1866. Additional materials were given to him by Sir Samuel Ferguson in 1879 and by Miss Mary Banim in 1886. A note by Williams in the flyleaf of one of the scrapbooks noted that the collection may have been created by Dublin printer, P. Bereton around 1869. Additional items in the collection are stamped with the National Library of Ireland.

Related Materials

009-01-01, Potter and Williams Collection on Irish Culture, Books and Pamphlets

007, Harris Collection on Civil War and Slavery, Civil War ballads

BP1001, Hesburgh Library Collection of Irish and British Broadside Ballads, Notre Dame University

Broadsides and Penny Ballads Collection, Ward Irish Music Archives, Milwaukee WI

Separated Materials

Box containing bound books of songs, poetry and almanac were separated out to be individually cataloged as part of the general Potter and Williams collection.

Physical Description

Original donation documentation notes that ballads were originally in scrapbooks. Dec. 7, 1961 - Letter from Stuart Sherman to William Wreden. Purchase of 40 Irish ballads which were removed “by soaking” from full scrapbook he had sent. There is no documentation about when the items were removed from all the scrapbooks.