A Collection of Irish Street Ballads

Dublin: P. Brereton printer 1 Lr. Exchange St, 1867. Very Good. A collection of 12 broadside song sheets of Irish ballads and drinking songs, printed in Dublin by Peter Brereton circa late 1860s. Each song is printed in one column on a thin sheet of wove paper, with a woodcut illustration at the head of the sheet. Four sheets are neatly mounted and one is professionally backed onto modern paper; the other seven are unmounted as issued, very good or better overall. Most of the broadsides have the imprint of P. Brereton; those that do not have uniquely identifiable typography and woodcuts that identify Brereton as printer. Celebrated today as “The Worst Printer Ever,” Brereton’s broadsides are rightly described as “an archive of printer’s errors and worst practices, and the ballads are often sonorous nightmares. But they are good fun … inverted letters, multiple type-faces, broken sorts, uneven leading, etc. Clearly, neither the printer nor reader cared much for these minor details.” (Andrew Kuhn. *The Brereton Collection: John J. Burns Library Blog*).

This special collection features Brereton at his delightful ‘best’ and contains several scarce contemporary ballads from the mid-19th Century, including *Lines on the Expected Testimonial of his Grace the late much Lammented Most Rev’d Doctor O’Connor, Bishop of Saldis* written by the blind Dublin street poet and ballad seller, Joseph Sadler. Also included are two variant copies of *Hagertys Ball*: one illustrated with a woodcut of a rural landscape, and the much scarcer variant printing with a woodcut illustration of a small group of young lads drinking. A well-preserved cache of scarce Irish street ballads. A detailed list of all 12 broadsides is available.