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The Peace Egg Book: an Anglo-Irish chapbook connection discovered - Research article: focus on traditional drama
Eddie CassAbstract
This article reports on the discovery of a copy of The Peace Egg Book, a previously unknown chapbook printed in Manchester, UK. The chapbook, which has an Irish text, is set within the contexts of printing and of the Irish community in mid-nineteenth-century Manchester. The textual links between The Peace Egg Book and the Belfast Christmas Rhime Books are analysed, as are the parallels to an Irish-influenced oral tradition set out in a manuscript of 1842. The article establishes the importance of the chapbook in linking together Irish and Lancashire traditional play chapbooks.
Introduction
Since the publication of Alex Helm's The Chapbook Mummers' Play in 1969, those studying commercially produced chapbooks containing traditional play texts have, if for no other reason than convenience, sub-divided them by title into a number of major groups--Alexander and the King of Egypt, Christmas Rhyme Books, The Peace Egg, Mumming Books, and so on (Helm 1969, 3; Preston et al. 1976a, 6). Each title mostly represents a unified group of variant texts and, conveniently, each group more or less equates with a region of the British Isles and a specific time period. Although overall these groups of chapbooks have, to a degree, common plot structures, little attention has been given to any textual relationships that may be found across the groups and, as a result, regions. [1] In October 2000, a copy of The Peace Egg Book "Printed for R. Carr, 9, Cotton-st, Ancoats, Manchester" was anonymously donated to the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books at Toronto Public Library, [2] and is reproduced here (see Appendix 1). This edition has caused us to consider the issue of textual inter-relationships because it clearly links the Peace Egg chapbooks of Lancashire and Yorkshire with the Christmas Rhyme chapbooks of Belfast, both of which were previously seen as distinct textual traditions, and so it inevitably raises a number of questions that this paper seeks to address.
Robert Carr
Robert Carr's appearance as a publisher of chapbooks in the Ancoats district of Manchester seems to have been brief, from 1835 until 1843, but during that time he was responsible for producing at least two important traditional drama chapbooks, The Peace Egg Book and an edition of The Peace Egg, or Saint George's Annual Play for the Amusement of Youth "Printed and published by R. Carr. 56, Hanover-Street, Manchester". [3] The Poor Rate Books for Ancoats shows that Carr first appears in the area in 1835, living at 9 Cotton Street in what seems to be a multi-tenanted lodging-house owned by "Jackson, Greengrocer" (Manchester Rate Books M9/40/2/114, 63). Carr remained at this address in Cotton Street until 1839 when the rate books show him as one of the tenants of John Tarr at 49 Hanover Street, Ancoats (Manchester Rate Books M9/40/2/125, 67-8; M9/40/2/126, 14). During 1840, Carr moved from 49 Hanover Street to 56 Hanover Street as a tenant in a house owned by John Drinkwater (Manchester Rate Books M9/40/2/129, 16). He remained at this address until 1843 when he left part way through the year (Manchester Rate Books M9/40/2/138, 16). We have not, so far, been able to locate Carr in Manchester after 1843.
The Poor Rate Books appear to paint a picture of a typical Ancoats resident living in a series of multi-tenanted houses, but Ancoats also had its share of small-business people, and the directories of the time place Carr in this category. The directories first list him in 1836 when he is described as "Robert Carr, juvenile bookseller, 9 Cotton Street" (Pigot 1836, 73). There is a similar entry for 1838, but here Carr is described merely as "bookseller" (Pigot 1838, 73). In the directory of 1841, Carr is listed as a bookseller but now at 49 Hanover Street (Pigot and Slater 1841, 58), and the final directory entry for him is in 1843 where he appears in the Booksellers and Stationers section as "Robert Carr (juvenile) 49 Hanover St" (Slater 1843, 11).
Carr's entries in these directories would possibly indicate a business of a reasonable size, but not necessarily on a large scale. This is entirely consonant with the information derived from the rate books, which suggests that neither the Cotton Street nor the Hanover Street premises would be of the size to support a substantial business, and yet Carr was in a position to commission a number of chapbooks during this period. [4] Given the type of properties in which he lived, we can be by no means certain of the nature or scale of the children's bookselling business of which Carr is said to have been the proprietor.
The 1841 census, the only one in which we have been able to trace Carr, does little to clarify his activities because of its paucity of information, or to add much to our knowledge of him as an individual. We know only that Carr, living in Hanover Street (house numbers were not given in this census), was aged 45 and married to Elizabeth, age 35 (ages were rounded in this census and are only approximate), and that both were born in the county. There is no record of their marriage in Manchester parish church registers, which suggests that the Carrs were possibly born outside Manchester. The census does, however, describe both Robert and Elizabeth Carr as booksellers, and so it seems likely, therefore, that they had been part of the book trade prior to their arrival. Despite the limited information on Robert Carr's background, those pieces that we have been able to glean do give us a reasonably narrow range of dates for the printing of both The Peace Egg Book (1836-38) and Carr's later chapbook, The Peace Egg, or Saint George's Annual Play for the Amusement of Youth (1840-43). That in itself is important when the majority of the ephemeral literature of this type is undated.
Manchester and its Irish Population in the Nineteenth Century
Asa Briggs described nineteenth-century Manchester as "the shock city of the Industrial Revolution" (Briggs 1965, 113), a phrase that has been repeated so often that it has become a cliche. As a description of the social and economic changes taking place at the time, however, the phrase represents a valuable shorthand. Nineteenth-century Manchester was the first city in the world in which its economic wealth was derived almost wholly from steam-driven manufacture, mainly of textiles. By the end of the eighteenth century, seventy per cent of the British cotton industry was concentrated in the cotton districts of Lancashire and Cheshire, and by 1835 this had risen to ninety per cent (Kidd 1993, 21). With this manufacture came related merchanting activity associated with the import and export of raw cotton, finished cloth, dyes, steel for machinery, all necessary in this new industry that was, in due course, to become the pre-eminent source of wealth. From the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, however, manufacturing predominated, and it was the large cotton mills built to service this new industry in Chorlton-on-Medlock, and especially in the Ancoats districts of Manchester (Williams and Farnie 1992), that attracted visitors from all over the world to see the wonders of the industrial revolution at first hand (Engels 1958; Faucher 1969; Bradshaw 1987; Schinkel 1993).
This new industry led to an almost unbelievably rapid expansion of the population of the city. Manchester was not only the first city to see the formation of an urban working class, but it was also the first city to host a manufacturing and merchanting middle class in the modern sense. It was the growth in the number of cotton operatives and the associated urban unskilled workforce that led to the spectacular population growth in the nineteenth century. In the late 1780s, Manchester had a population of some 40,000 (Briggs 1965, 85), but by the time of the first census in 1801 this figure had nearly doubled to 77,000. It doubled again by the 1820s, increasing to 243,000 by 1841 and, by the mid-century census of 1851, the population of Manchester was 316,000 (Kidd 1993, 22). As Briggs points out, Manchester was "still a small place by later standards, yet it was felt to be one of the 'phenomena of the age'" (Briggs 1965, 85).
The increase in population had been driven by the demands for workers in the new textile industry. Much of this migration was short distance and occurred in inward moving waves (Redford 1976). Workers moved into Manchester from nearby villages and were replaced by men and women from further out, people who in their turn would be attracted towards, or forced into, the ever-expanding mills. Some of the migration, however, was long distance, and the most noticeable element of this inflow was the Irish. There are references to an Irish population in Manchester from the mid-eighteenth century and, by the late 1780s, the numbers were said to be about 5000 (Redford 1976, 134). But from then onwards, the Irish migration expanded rapidly as the growing disparity between the job opportunities presented by the developing industrial areas of Lancashire and the unemployment and poverty of Ireland manifested itself. The Irish population of Manchester in 1841 was some 30,000 or 12.5 per cent of the total. By 1851, this had grown to 53,000 (13.1 per cent) and, if non-Irish-born children of two Irish-born parents are included, that percentage is increased to 17.5 (Busteed 1998, 639-41; 1999, 95). This Irish population was concentrated in three areas: the infamous but short-lived community of Little Ireland by the River Medlock at Cambridge Street (Kay 1969; Busteed 1995), Irish Town by Victoria Station, and Ancoats, which was to become Manchester's largest Irish community (Busteed 1998; 1999).
Nineteenth-Century Manchester Printers and the Irish Market
Ancoats was, by the 1830s, an industrial district of Manchester, densely populated largely by a new urban working class and with a growing Irish minority. There, in the middle of the decade, Robert Carr found himself in business as a bookseller catering to the "leisure trade" (Feather 1985, 40-3), in an area that, while not as significant as the Seven Dials district of London, was nevertheless home to a number of Manchester chapbook and broadside printers and publishers. These included George Jacques in Oldham Road (c. 1840--45) and John Cadman of Great Ancoats Street (c. 1850-55) (Neuburg 1971, 59). A little away from Ancoats, in nearby Shudehill, was John Wrigley (c.1843--72) (Slater 1843, 47, 54, 337; 1871-72, 719). The most prolific printers of this period in Ancoats appear to have been John Bebbington of Goulden Street and Oldham Road (c. 1855-61) (Neuburg 1971, 58) and Thomas Pearson of 6 Chadderton Street (c. 1860-94) (Slater 1861, 362; 1894, 192). An indication of the output of these firms can be gained from the fact that Manchester Local Studies Library holds a collection of Pearson broadsides that numbers in excess of 600 sheets (Manchester Ballads c. 1850-73), and some 729 sheets are listed in a catalogue and two supplements that Pearson produced around 1872 (Pearson c. 1872a; 1872b; 1872c).
An analysis of the contents of the Irish songs in the 132 broadsides produced by Manchester printers that comprise the Geoffrey R. Axon collection [5] shows that some sixty-eight per cent of the sheets were printed in Ancoats, and that the percentage would be higher if even a portion of the anonymously printed sheets, some twenty-two per cent, were included (Cass 2001a). Mervyn Busteed has said that "of the 280 ballads in the Axon collection, 53 have explicit Irish references ..." (Busteed 1998, 646). This figure represents nineteen per cent of the total. It may, however, be more revealing to look at the number of broadsides that contain at least one item of Irish interest among what may be two or more ballads; in this case, the proportion of sheets that might have an appeal to an Irish audience then rises to the relatively high figure of thirty-six per cent. It is impossible, however, to extrapolate from this figure the total production of such printed material in the period, because we do not know just how representative the collection is. Nevertheless, the Irish material within the collection does indicate the extent to which Manchester printers were willing to cater to the significant local population. Busteed argues that these songs "... provide a more direct insight into the thoughts and feelings of the mid-nineteenth century Irish in Manchester than census returns, newspapers and parliamentary reports ... It is also possible that in some cases at least the composer and singer were speaking and singing on behalf of and to the Irish rather than from out of the Irish community of Manchester itself" (Busteed 1998, 646). He concludes that "... participation in the performance of a song with nationalist overtones ... is an expression of a shared imagined identity and a means of further bonding" (Busteed 1998, 660).
While it has not been possible to trace a direct link between the printers of Ancoats and any Irish printer, it is known that there were links between chapbook printers in Manchester and Belfast at this time. For example, the imprint on a copy of The Moral Sayings and Prophecies of St Columb Kille, Translated out of the Original Irish. By the Rev. Mr. Taaffe ... "Manchester, Printed by M. Beegan, 26 Brown St and Belfast: Reprinted by J. Smyth, 34, High-St 1845," [6] indicates such a working relationship--be it an Irish printer reprinting the work of an English publisher, a not altogether unusual occurrence (Cole 1986). Nor has it been possible to say with any certainty from where the Ancoats printers obtained specific songs and ballads, because although this material could have been from printers in Ireland, it could equally well have been from printers elsewhere in the British Isles. Nevertheless, the fact that these songs and ballads were printed in Ancoats indicates an awareness on the part of the local printers that an Irish market for such material existed. It is against this background that Carr's The Peace Egg Book should be seen.
The Peace Egg Book and the Christmas Rhyme Books
Robert Carr's title for his chapbook, The Peace Egg Book, immediately suggests that it is a variant of the peace-egg traditional drama chapbooks that were published in the nineteenth century, mainly in Lancashire and Yorkshire, as we discuss later. An examination of the text of The Peace Egg Book shows, however, that it is clearly more closely related to the Christmas Rhyme chapbooks printed in Belfast in the first half of the nineteenth century than to any of its English counterparts.
To date, nine distinct printings of the Christmas Rhyme books from Belfast have been identified, with examples of six so far traced (Boyes et al. 1999). The earliest located editions have the title The Christmas Rhime or, The Mummer's own Book ... and were published by Joseph Smyth and David Lyons (c. 1803-18) and Joseph Smyth (c. 1810-50). The four other located editions, all with the title The New Christmas Rhyme Book, were produced by John Nicholson some time after 1888. [7] Of the three as yet unlocated chapbooks, one was identified by Thomas Crofton Croker (1826-54) as supposedly published by Charles Dillon in Cork (c. 1824-41), and two were produced by unidentified Belfast printers (Patterson 1872; Tiddy 1923, 141-3).
It would seem logical, therefore, that if The Peace Egg Book is related to this group of Irish chapbooks, its date of publication (1836-38) makes it likely that it is related to the earlier ones produced by Smyth and Lyons (c. 1803-18) and Joseph Smyth (c. 1810-50). This view is supported by a number of variant textual items that The Peace Egg Book and The Christmas Rhime ... chapbooks have in common, but that are divergent from the later New Christmas Rhyme Book texts. For example, The Peace Egg Book contains "set" in line fifty-one rather than "fit" as in the Patterson reprint and "fix" as in the John Nicholson chapbooks; it similarly contains "he" in line fifty-seven rather than the "who" of the later editions. It likewise disagrees with Tiddy's transcript in having "young" rather than "youth" in line five.
A comparison of the text of Carr's The Peace Egg Book and The Christmas Rhime ... chapbooks from Smyth and Lyons and Joseph Smyth [8] shows, however, that this is not a straightforward case of simply reprinting one text from another. For example, segments of The Christmas Rhime ..., comprising part of the Turkey Champion's speech, [9] the final speech, [10] and the concluding song, [11] have been omitted from The Peace Egg Book. Together these changes indicate that a degree of conscious editorial intervention has taken place. Conversely, Carr's text differs from all known editions of the Christmas Rhyme Books in a number of ways, the most striking being the substitution of "Belzebub" for "Devil Doubt" in lines seventy-two to seventy-three of The Peace Egg Book. [12] None of the changes that appear in The Peace Egg Book are to be found in the later Belfast chapbooks, with the exception of the omission of an obscure stage-direction in line 46 in the early Belfast chapbooks and its more modern use of capitalisation. [13] This indicates that The Peace Egg Book is not the immediate source for the later New Christmas Rhyme Books. The overall textual similarity, however--as well as identical typesetting accidentals, such as the inconsistent use in both texts of "Prince George" but then "knight George"--seems to be evidence for the transmission being from one printed text to another, rather than through some hypothetical oral intermediary. [14]
To summarise, The Peace Egg Book seems most likely to have been based on an early Belfast original, and logically from a printed text produced before 1836-38, such as The Christmas Rhime.... However, this does not exclude other possibilities. There may well have been an as yet unlocated printed precursor, a text upon which both the early Belfast chapbooks and The Peace Egg Book were based. Similarly, there could have been a printed intermediary text, such as the unlocated edition by Charles Dillon of Cork (c. 1824-41), which could have followed The Christmas Rime ... and provided the basis for The Peace Egg Book. Although both scenarios are logical possibilities, we do not intend to encourage mere speculation concerning "lost chapbooks."
Carr's use of the title The Peace Egg Book indicates the chapbook's possible transitional status. Carr's choice of text and his use of the term "Book" in the title demonstrates a link to the earlier Belfast Christmas Rhime or, The Mummer's own Book ..., a strategy also adopted by the Belfast printer John Nicholson in his subsequent editions of The New Christmas Rhyme-Book. In contrast, the reference to "The Peace Egg" in the title, [15] while differentiating Carr's edition from the earlier Irish chapbooks, acknowledges the Pace-Egg play tradition already existing in Lancashire at that time. [16] Carr therefore appears to have been trying to produce something that would appeal to both Irish immigrants in the Manchester area and the local English population. Regardless, The Peace Egg Book appears to be a dead-end in terms of its publishing history. Despite The Peace Egg Book being one of the earliest chapbooks containing a traditional play text, it appears not to have influenced the texts of any of the known later editions of the English Peace-Egg chapbooks, including Carr's own The Peace Egg, or Saint George's Annual Play for the Amusement of Youth.
The Physical Format
The Christmas Rhime and The Peace Egg Book
The physical formats of The Christmas Rhime ... chapbooks and The Peace Egg Book are somewhat different. The former, comprising thirty-two pages (80 x 54 mm), dedicates sixteen pages to presenting and illustrating the play, the rest being devoted to the covers, prelims, an alphabet reminiscent of a horn book (Tuer 1979), and ten pages of children's rhymes. In contrast, The Peace Egg Book (99 x 68 mm) devotes ten pages out of a total of twelve to presenting and illustrating the play, the other two pages being the front-cover and the back-cover that contains an alphabet and the colophon. In that respect, The Peace Egg Book appears not to be an attempt to duplicate a Christmas Rhime ... chapbook in its entirety, but only to reproduce certain aspects; namely, the play text and the alphabet.
The front-cover woodcut of The Peace Egg Book is informative in itself as it provides some evidence of a terminus a quo. The dress worn by the soldier on the cover was adopted by officers of the British Army around the time of the Peninsular War (Barnes 1950; Windraw and Embleton 1974). Thus, an assemblage of woodcuts and text such as Carr's could have been constructed only after c. 1810.
A comparison of the woodcuts in The Christmas Rhime ... chapbooks and those in The Peace Egg Book demonstrates a close level of affinity. The latter appears to contain a series of illustrations that not only attempts to mimic those in the earlier Belfast editions but, as the following shows, are placed in the play text at very similar, if not identical, positions. In both instances, the positioning of the illustrations is possibly not coincidental; the woodcuts appear to have been used to separate the speeches and identify the speakers.
Christmas Rhime ... The Peace Egg Book Position Punch Punch Identical Soldier Soldier Identical Combat Soldier Indentical Wounding/Death Soldier Close Doctor Soldier Close Doctor and Patient -- -- Soldier and St Patrick Soldier Identical [Block Missing Soldier Identical Cromwell as a Soldier Cromwell as a Gentleman Identical Belzebub Belzebub Identical Devil Doubt Devil Doubt Identical Collector -- -- Three Soldiers -- --
Overall, the woodcuts in The Christmas Rhime ... appear to have been selected specifically to illustrate the play. In contrast, those in The Peace Egg Book, while not out of place, leave the impression that they were simply selected from what was available at the time (O'Lochlainn 1939, xii; Simons 1994, 359), mostly being of soldiers striking heroic poses. Interestingly, and perhaps not surprisingly, Carr's image of Oliver Cromwell as a "gentleman" contrasts with that of him as a military figure in the Irish chapbooks, although again this may be as a result of there being few woodcuts available from which to chose. As Hugh Shields has observed:
Printers lacked either funds, or time, or expertise, or even visual subject models to enable them to have new cuts made for each new sheet, while all the time they possessed an increasing stock of old cuts some of which, at a pinch, could be deemed illustrative enough to serve again. Printers were often "at a pinch," some more than others, and the irrelevance of illustrations might range from the frankly unintelligible to the comically incongruous (Shields 1994, 209).
The two final illustrations in The Christmas Rhime ... are not included in The Peace Egg Book because they follow the point at which the text has been truncated. The illustration of the "Doctor and Patient," however, has also been omitted, and the woodcut of the "Wounding/Death" and the "Doctor" have been substituted and repositioned. The deletions in the text and the omission of some illustrations in The Peace Egg Book may both be indicative of the limitation of space (twelve pages as opposed to sixteen), and an economy of production, as demonstrated by the substitutions and multiple use of woodcuts. Nevertheless, The Peace Egg Book is fully illustrated, in that it has one woodcut per page and an alphabet on the back cover.
Interestingly, the front-cover woodcut of The Peace Egg Book is also used in the third known surviving example of Carr's work, Mary Johnson "Printed for R. Carr, Hanover-st, Manchester" (page three). With the exception of the front cover, which has a somewhat out-of-place picture of Moses receiving the tablets, the other pictures in this chapbook, which again have little to do with the text, comprise three very simple line-illustrations that are devoid of any shading, perspective, or detail. The two chapbooks suggest that Carr, or his printer, had only a limited number of woodcuts available. This suggestion is reinforced by an unusual feature of The Peace Egg Book--one woodcut of a soldier has been used twice (see pages three and eight). A close examination of these two images suggests that, in spite of the break in the sword on the woodcut on page eight, they were both printed from the same block. To re-use a block a second time in this way is entirely in accord with the stages in which a printer could print, fold, and cut a single sheet of paper to produce a twelve-page booklet (Johnson 1824, 2:158-65; Timperley 1838, 25-8; Gaskell 1995, 78-117). That Carr had very limited resources appears to be an inescapable conclusion.
The Peace Egg Book and the Later Peace Egg Chapbook Tradition
An examination of the subsequent use of the woodcuts in The Peace Egg Book (1836-38) shows some surprising features. While we should possibly expect to find Carr re-using his woodcuts in The Peace Egg, or Saint George's Annual Play ... (1840-43), what we actually find is that none of the ten illustrations of the characters have been re-used, although four of them have, to a degree, been mimicked.
The Peace Egg Book The Peace Egg ... Position
Soldier Soldier (substitution) Identical
(front cover)
Punch Punch (substitution) Identical (page two)
Soldier -- --
Soldier Roman Soldier Identical
(page four)
Soldier -- --
Soldier -- --
Soldier -- --
Soldier -- Not Applicable
Cromwell as a Gentleman -- Not Applicable
Belzebub -- Not Applicable
Devil Doubt Devil Doubt (enlarged) Identical
(last page of text)
Alphabet -- Not Applicable
The explanation for the changes may be that whoever printed The Peace Egg Book "for R. Carr ..." "used blocks in his own possession, but these were not available to Carr when he later "Printed and Published ..." his edition of The Peace Egg or Saint George's Annual Play.... Alternatively, Carr may have wanted to present a visually distinct edition to his customers. The reduction in the number of illustrations may, as seen before, have been dictated by the reduced number of pages given over to the play text in the later production (seven pages as opposed to ten), coupled with the use of a different lengthier text, which in itself must have had some ramifications.
Of the other known editions of The Peace Egg chapbooks, those produced in Lancashire with the title The Peace Egg or Saint George: An Easter Play contain unrelated images. Conversely, The Peace Egg chapbooks published by John Wrigley (c. 1843-52) and his successor Thomas Pearson (c. 1871-94) in Manchester, Joseph Johnson in Leeds (1826/29-47), and Joseph Lund of Bradford (1847-68), all contain illustrations that, while not identical, owe much to Carr's edition of The Peace Egg, or Saint George's Annual Play ..., but not The Peace Egg Book. Slightly less closely related are the editions of The Peace Egg produced by George Buchan of Leeds (c. 1884/86-1913). Those produced by Gage and Gray (1864) and Kay (1866-1870) in Glasgow (Preston et al. 1976b, 72) have no illustrations, and that published by William Willis in Manchester between c. 1839 and 1848 (Hollingworth 1839; Slater 1848, 14, 76 and 281) contains unrelated images (Cass et al., forthcoming b).
In contrast, a number of the illustrations from both of the Carr chapbooks appear in the editions of The Peace Egg, or Saint George's Annual Play ... produced by John Harkness who was printing in Preston, Lancashire from around 1841 to 1880, and subsequently in Howick and Longton up to approximately 1886 (Whittle 1841, 79; Harris Public Library 1842; 1881 Census; Mannex 1881, 105, 333 and 357; Barrett 1885, 144, 405 and 450; Spencer 1948). From some time between 1844 and 1886 (Harris Public Library 1844; Barrett 1885, 144, 405 and 450), Harkness produced at least five essentially identical editions of this work, in some instances the imprint being modified to reflect his change of address (see Appendix 2). Of the ten different woodcuts used in Carr's The Peace Egg Book, four apparently identical images were subsequently used by Harkness in his chapbook. Punch (page two) was used by Harkness in the same position; the soldier figure (page five) appears on page three; the Doctor figure (page six) is repeated on page four, and Devil Doubt (page eleven) is used on page eight. In addition, the image of the "Roman soldier" on page four of Carr's The Peace Egg, or Saint George's Annual Play ... appears on page five of the Harkness chapbook, and the woodcut of Devil Doubt from the same edition (page eight) was used by Harkness as the cover of his chapbook, possibly to make it appear distinct from the Manchester Peace Egg chapbooks while remaining firmly within the tradition of the publications.
Comparison of the Carr and Harkness woodcuts demonstrates an exceptionally high degree of similarity, so much so that it seems beyond being a coincidence. Images that appear in Carr's chapbooks feature later in both chapbooks and broadsides by Harkness, leading us to believe that the original blocks, whether then owned by Carr or his printer, were acquired in some manner by John Harkness. [17]
The Peace Egg Book and the Pace-Egg Play
The pace-egg play was the local Lancashire version of the traditional hero-combat play that was also performed in parts of adjacent counties, including West Yorkshire and parts of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Cheshire. While "pace egg" was the traditional local term for the play, "peace egg" was the more common title of the chapbook versions.
Records of traditional plays of this type are sparse in Lancashire before 1850 (Cass 2001b), although they do exist, sometimes with alternative titles. There is evidence that a "St George" play was known in the Blackpool area as early as the 1790s, and by 1837 the custom is recorded as "pace egging" (Thornber 1837, 92; T. [William Thornber?] 1858). Nearer to Manchester, Charlotte Burne recounts that her mother remembered a "King George" play as being performed by "pace-eggers" at Easter in Bury, an observation that appears to have been made in circumstances that suggest the custom was well established and not unusual in the 1820s (Burne 1909, 204). That the custom was common during the nineteenth century in the area between Bury and Manchester is confirmed by other writers (Potter 1879; Hayes 1905; Hardman 1921; Brooks 1949), but only Brooks actually gives a text in a context that suggests he took part in the play in his youth (Brooks 1949, 109-16). Brooks' text echoes other Lancashire versions of the play that are clearly different from that in The Peace Egg Book, and none of which include the characters of St Patrick and Oliver Cromwell who appear in Carr's edition.
If records of the pace-egg play in Lancashire are sparse before 1850, they are even rarer for the township of Manchester at that time. The firmest evidence of the custom we have is in a letter written on 4 April 1842 by Jesse Lee, a Rochdale-born antiquarian, writer, and genealogist, to Revd John Relly Beard (Lee n.d.). Beard was a Unitarian minister in Salford who ran a private school in Broughton, and he was clearly interested in local customs. Jesse Lee lived in Lloyd Street, Hulme, an area that, while not being one of the major Irish settlements, was close to Little Ireland, less than two miles from Ancoats, and had a large enough Catholic population to warrant founding St Wilfrid's church in 1842. While his observation that the pace-egg play tradition "is falling off, particularly in the large towns" seems somewhat precipitate, Lee's letter is a seminal document. It appears that Lee is describing an oral tradition in that the text that he sets out contains many elements that are not part of any chapbook, but that are recorded as being part of an oral tradition in areas of Lancashire into the twentieth century. Of particular relevance for our understanding of the role of The Peace Egg Book, Lee comments that:
Within the last twenty years the following has sometimes been added.
Enter St Patrick--Here come I, St Patrick, in shining armour
bright, A famous champion and a worthy knight. What was St
George? But St Patrick's boy! He fed his horses seven long
years on oats and hay, And after that,--he ran away.
and
Enter O.C.--Here come I Oliver Cromwell as you may suppose,
I have conquered many nations, with my Copper Nose;
I made my foes to tremble and my enemies to quake,
And beat all my opposers, till I made their hearts to ache,
And if you don't believe the words I have to say
Enter in Old Beelzebub and clear for me the way (Lee n.d.).
The appearance in the Manchester area at this time of the characters of both St Patrick and Oliver Cromwell is interesting in that neither are common characters in English plays. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, although too much should not be made of the evidence from later plays because of the increasing rate of population migration (Saville 1957). For example, both Oliver Cromwell and St Patrick appear in the "Christmas Rhymes" play, which Alex Helm suggested came from Dover in Kent (Ordish Collection n.d., Kent 1); Oliver Cromwell's speech is to be found in the play from Tenby in Wales (Barnaschone 1857, 195) and Maurice Barley lists Oliver Cromwell among the characters of the play recorded at Underwood in Nottinghamshire by Garth Christian in the 1950s (Barley n.d., Ba P 1/35; Barley 1953, 93). Additionally, there are plays that have some lines derived from speeches by Oliver Cromwell, such as that spoken by "Mary Anne" at Uttoxeter in Staffordshire (Harrop 1980, 341). St Patrick also appears in plays from Dorset (Udal 1880, 93-7; Kennedy 1952, 4-8), although not with the associated speech found in the Irish oral and chapbook traditions and Carr's The Peace Egg Book.
Unfortunately, we cannot be certain of the source of Lee's text. The two speeches quoted may well reflect additions that came from a traditional play brought to the Hulme area by Irish immigrants. It seems unlikely, however, that Lee's text represents an oral tradition completely unnaffected by chapbook texts--either Irish or English. A comparison of what is possibly one of the few surviving Irish traditional plays from before the period under discussion, that from Ballybrennan, Wexford (c. 1820) (Kennedy 1863, 584-5; 1867, 227-9), Lee's text (1842), and the Smyth (c. 1803-18) and the Carr (1836-38) chapbooks, show that while close variants of Oliver Cromwell's speech are common to all, recognisable variants of St Patrick's speech are only to be found in Lee's text and the Smyth and the Carr chapbooks. The Lee text, moreover, is not directly copied from Carr's The Peace Egg Book. In the chapbook both speeches are written in prose, whereas Lee writes them as a series of rhyming lines; the main difference, however, lies in the last line of Oliver Cromwell's speech where Lee has Cromwell call on "Old Beelzebub," but Carr has him, mistakenly, call on "little Devil Doubt." This last difference suggests that the text of an earlier Irish chapbook may have been known in Manchester prior to 1842, the date of Lee's letter, and so supports the notion that the text of Carr's The Peace Egg Book was possibly derived from an earlier Belfast produced Christmas Rhime ... chapbook that was available locally.
Conclusion
The fortuitous discovery of this possibly unique copy of The Peace Egg Book (1836-38) has important ramifications for the study of the relationship between Irish and English traditional drama chapbooks. The discovery also has implications for the deeper understanding of the far-from-clear relationship between the plays in their printed form and the performance tradition.
While there appears to be no single specific source for Carr's The Peace Egg Book, a close similarity exists to the early Belfast Christmas Rhime ... chapbooks. There is also no known reason for the pamphlet's publication, other than the obvious economic one of making money. In the mid-nineteenth century there was clearly an attempt by several printers in Ancoats to provide items that would appeal to the Irish inhabitants of this part of Manchester and the adjacent districts of Little Ireland and Irish Town. Busteed has argued that many of the songs and ballads that were sold were designed to speak to the Irish community, and similarly The Peace Egg Book was possibly intended for the local Irish audience. But whether the chapbook was intended to be read by this audience, or whether it was intended to provide for the needs of a performance tradition, is something we cannot yet determine, because so far no record of a peace-egg play performed in the Ancoats area has been traced.
In the course of our research into the history of traditional drama chapbooks, we have been conscious of the seemingly late appearance of the peace-egg texts in terms of printing history, towards the end of the great period of street literature rather than at its apogee. The Alexander and the King of Egypt chapbooks first appeared in the middle of the eighteenth century (Preston et al. 1977, 1); the earliest Smyth and Lyons Christmas Rhime ... chapbook can be dated to c. 1803 (Boyes et al. 1999, 3). And yet, despite the fact that Manchester was a well-known centre for broadside and chapbook printing, it was another thirty years before peace egg chapbooks began to appear there. The discovery of The Peace Egg Book suggests the possibility, therefore, that earlier appearances in the city of texts such as The Christmas Rhime ... may well have bridged that thirty-year gap.
Jesse Lee's letter provides the only known description of an Irish influence on the Lancashire oral tradition. Here, textual evidence and the emergent speeches by Saint Patrick and Oliver Cromwell suggest that an Irish chapbook may well have been known in Manchester in the 1830s, thus providing a source for the change in the oral tradition noted by Lee, and also a potential source for Carr's chapbook. The fact that both the oral and print traditions in Manchester include distinctive elements from an Irish chapbook is interesting, for it is doubtful that the existence of a single copy of The Christmas Rhime ... in the area could have exerted that degree of influence. Instead, it argues that multiple printings were in circulation. But it is impossible to tell whether such chapbooks came via some relationship between a Belfast and an Ancoats printer, or were sold by itinerant hawkers coming over from Ireland, or were imported from Ireland as new goods for sale to the immigrant population in the area, or were part of the immense trade in secondhand books that were brought over to "Manchester ... supplied principally from Dublin, but some have come from Belfast ..." (Folio 1858, 78).
Regardless of how the text of The Peace Egg Book originally came from Belfast to Ancoats, the fact that it did perhaps closes the circle. Some researchers have suggested that the plays found in the Irish oral tradition were brought over by English and Scottish settlers in the seventeenth century (Gailey 1968, 15-6; Glassie 1975, 135). And Alan Gailey has gone so far as to suggest that:
A definite conclusion about the geographical origins can be reached only for the plays in south-east County Antrim. They represent a local reworking of versions brought over to Ulster from Cheshire and south Lancashire, probably in the seventeenth century. However, since they also incorporate both Irish and Scottish features in a combination unknown elsewhere, they must be regarded as more Irish than not. Indeed, this might be said about any Irish folk play, since nowhere in Britain has anything identical ever been discovered (Gailey 1969, 61-2).
While this may be the case for the oral tradition (although we think the suggested dates to be too early [18]), it now appears that at least one text did make it back to Lancashire--in the form of a chapbook.
As we have demonstrated, each new traditional drama chapbook located helps to add a piece to the jigsaw puzzle that is the early history of traditional drama in England. While current emphasis tends to be on synchronic studies of folk play traditions, attempts to throw light upon the genre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are still important because, as Ronald Hutton has observed, "the actual evolution of the play remains a complete mystery, and a very intriguing one" (Hutton 1996, 78). Hence, the nature of the relationship between the various printed chapbook traditions and their relationship to the oral tradition remains an issue of significance. It helps us to understand the processes by which plays such as these emerged and spread. The existence of this unique Carr chapbook has provided some valuable insights into those processes.
Appendix 1: The Peace Egg Book
Original in the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, Lillian H. Smith Branch, Toronto Public Library.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Appendix 2: Principal Chapbooks Referred to in the Text The Peace Egg Book
Robert Carr, Manchester
1: The Peace Egg/BOOK. [Back page imprint] Printed for R. Carr, 9, Cotton-st,/Ancoats, Manchester.
Copies:
Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, Lillian H. Smith Branch, Toronto Public Library. 12 pp. 99 x 68 mm. 11 illus.
The Peace Egg or Saint George's Annual Play
Robert Carr, Manchester
1: THE PEACE EGG/OR/SAINT GEORGE'S/ANNUAL PLAY/FOR THE/AMUSEMENT OF YOUTH./PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY/R. CARR./56, HANOVER-STREET, MANCHESTER.
Copies:
Leeds Central Library, Cat. No. 398.5.P114. 8 pp. 160 x 96 mm. 4 illus. [Title and back page colour washed green.]; Paul Wood and Christine Dean Collection. 8 pp. 159 x 85 mm. 4 illus.
John Harkness, Preston
1: THE/PEACE EGG;/OR,/St. George's/ANNUAL PLAY,/FOR THE/AMUSEMENT OF YOUTH. PRESTON:/PRINTED BY J. HARKNESS, 121, CHURCH STREET.
Copies:
British Library. RB23a 17736(2). 8 pp. 165 x 101 mm. 6 illus. [Red and green hand coloured wash on the border.]
2: THE/PEACE EGG;/OR,/St. George's/ANNUAL PLAY,/FOR THE/AMUSEMENT OF YOUTH./PRESTON:/ PRINTED BY J. HARKNESS, 121, CHURCH STREET.
Copies:
E.C. Cawte Collection [Formerly in the Alex Helm Collection]. 8 pp. 167 x 106 mm. 6 illus. [Hand coloured cover in yellow, black, red, green and brown.]
Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, London Acc. No. P294. 8 pp. 168 x 102 mm. 6 illus. Cambridge University Library, Cat. No. XIX. 60.98c. 8 pp. 165 x 98 mm. 6 illus. [Hand coloured cover.]
3: THE/PEACE EGG,/OR,/St. George'S/ANNUAL PLAY,/FOR THE/AMUSEMENT OF YOUTH./PRESTON:/ PRINTED BY J. HARKNESS, 121, CHURCH STREET.
Copies:
Harris Public Library, Preston, p. 822. Pamphlets. 8 pp. 170 x 105 mm. 6 illus.
4: THE/PEACE EGG,/OR,/St. George'S/ANNUAL PLAY/FOR THE/AMUSEMENT OF YOUTH./PRESTON:/PRINTED BY J. HARKNESS, 31, CHURCH STREET.
Copies:
Toronto Public Library, Osbourne Collection of Children's Books. 8 pp. 170 x 96 mm. 6 illus.
Opie R115, Opie Collection, [Department of Rare Books], Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. 8 pp. 169 x 106 mm. 6 illus.
National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield. Long Item No. 214., [8 pp.?] c. 152 x 105 mm. [6 illus.?] [This item is a collation of handwritten text and cut up chapbook texts and illustrations.]
5: THE/PEACE EGG,/OR,/St. George'S/ANNUAL PLAY,/FOR THE/AMUSEMENT OF YOUTH./PRINTED BY J. HARKNESS [REST OF IMPRINT REMOVED]
Copies:
Yorkshire Archaeological Society Library, Cat. No. 53U5. 8 pp. 172 x 107 mm. 6 illus.
Leslie Shepard Collection (first copy). 8 pp. 170 x 105 mm. 6 illus. [Printed on blue tinted paper.]
Leslie Shepard Collection (second copy). 8 pp. 170 x 105 mm. 6 illus. [Cover title lettering, border and imprint are in faint red type.]
Oldham Library, Art Gallery and Museum. 8 pp. 173 x 108 mm. 6 illus. [Front cover is colour washed in red on the printer's border and over part of the door.]
Manchester Public Library, W. E. A. Axon Collection of Chapbooks. BR.398.5 C19. Item 11.8 pp. 175 x 103 mm. 6 illus.
Gerald Tyler Collection, incorporating material from Mrs. Wm. M. Mason. National Centre for English Cultural Traditions, University of Sheffield. Long Item File 214. 8 pp. 168 x 110 mm. 6 illus.
Halifax Public Library, Horsfall Turner Collection, P398/R4504. [Incomplete: pages 1, 2, 7 and 8 only.] 170 x 105 mm. [? Illus]. [Colour washed in red on front page borders.]
Opie R116, Opie Collection, [Department of Rare Books], Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. 8 pp. 174 x 109 mm. 6 illus.
Eddie Cass Collection. 8 pp. 176 x 111 mm. 6 illus. [Front cover is colour washed in red on the printer's border and over part of the door.]
Birmingham University Library, ML Special Collection. Selbourne Pamphlets PZ 6.P42. 8 pp. 180 x 110 mm. 6 illus. Original is an uncut sheet 340 mm x 220mm. [Front cover is part colour washed in red.]
Notes
[1] One exception is the study of the "The Peace Egg Chapbooks in Scotland ..." (Preston et al. 1976b).
[2] Our thanks go to the writers Andrea and David Spalding of Pender Island, British Columbia, for bringing this chapbook to our attention. We also thank Lori McLeod of the Lillian H. Smith Branch of Toronto Public Library where the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books is housed for kindly supplying us with copies of the chapbook, making arrangements for us to reproduce it, and for patiently answering our questions. We also owe thanks to the librarians of the Harris Public Library, Preston, and to Peter Millington who helped us to locate various references, John Moulden for his input on Irish broadside and chapbook printers, David Temperley who helped us to follow the fortunes of the collection of Carr chapbooks referred to in note three and Nick Mansfield who provided information on military costumes. Finally our thanks must go to Martha Scott, Acting Head of the Osborne Collection, who graciously granted us permission to reproduce the chapbook.
[3] Two surviving examples of this chapbook are known (see Appendix 2).
[4] Regrettably, the current whereabouts of only one other confirmed example of a chapbook by Robert Carr of Manchester is known, Mary Johnson "Printed for R. Carr, Hanover-st, Manchester" (twelve pages) (copy in the Paul Smith Collection). Nonetheless, other tantalising references exist, such as the following collection of twenty-three titles by an R. Carr (address unspecified) that were sold at a Sotheby's auction in 1974:
Billy Best's Visit to the Fair; The Fairy and the Farmer; The History of Beasts; The History of Dame Crump; The History of Little Jane; The History of Lucy Gray; History of Mary Ann; Jack Sprat and his Cat; Jacky Dandy; The Life and Death of Little Jenny Wren; The Life of Little Jack Sprat; The Little Primer; My Mother; Nursery Rhymes; Paul Pry's Magic Lantern; Red Riding Hood; The Remarkable Life of Jack and Jill; Reward of Kindness; Riddle Book; Songs for Little Children; Sports and Pastimes; Tom Tucker; The Tragical Death of an Apple Pie. [23 vol. in I, wood-engraved illustrations, those on the outer pages coloured by hand, calf gilt. 32mo R. Carr, c. 1840] (Sotheby and Co. 1974, 85: Lot 404).
Unfortunately, it has been impossible to verify whether these items were in any way connected with Robert Carr of Manchester. The collection was purchased by Blackwell's of Oxford, subsequently sold by them to an unnamed buyer, and its present whereabouts is unknown.
[5] The Geoffrey R. Axon collection of Manchester broadsides was owned by the grandson of the well-known Manchester antiquarian, William Ernest Armytage Axon ("Lynx-Eye Junior" 1893; Walmsley 1964), who was himself an authority on street literature (Axon 1883a; 1883b). On the death of G. R. Axon in 1961, the collection was given to the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society by his son. Subsequently, the Society placed the collection on permanent loan to Chetham's Library in Manchester (Cass 2001a).
[6] Chapbook in the Paul Smith Collection. In some of his works, Beegan describes himself as a Catholic printer and publisher. Furthermore, although he was based in Manchester, it is evident that he worked in conjunction with publishers in other parts of England, as well as in Scotland and Ireland (see, for example Ward, 1815).
[7] Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Document D652/1683. This comprises An Agreement for Lease of 26 Church Lane, Belfast, made 26 May 1888 between John Nicholson, 26 Church Lane, Stationer, and the Countess of Shaftesbury from 1 May 1888, for ten years and is endorsed, "Renewed for term of three years from May 1898 on same terms."
[8] Space does not allow us to include a full text of The Christmas Rhyme ... for comparison purposes, but see Boyes et al. (1999, 22-33).
[9] Lines 45-52: "I'll ... Christendom."
[10] Lines 120-26: "Gentlemen ... brass."
[11] Lines 127-31: "Song ... RHIME."
[12] Other substantive differences include "and what" for "what more" (line 21) in The Peace Egg Book, "always" for "will always" (line 24), "not" for "never" (line 39), "to" for "can" (line 40), "four score" for "threescore" (line 50), "with" for "and" (line 50), "broken" for "be broke" (line 51), "horses" for "horse" (line 57), "after that" for "afterwards" (line 59), and "rapier" for "Sword" (line 62).
[13] For example, "on a Stage ..." (line 8) becomes "on a stage ..." (line 6).
[14] It could perhaps appear appropriate to comment that, if The Peace Egg Book was based on an edition of The Christmas Rhime.... whoever did the typesetting for Carr appears to have been somewhat lackadaisical. Such a value judgement, however, presupposes that "the standard" was to create a faithful reproduction of the text being copied as opposed to an approximation. As Philip Gaskell has succinctly observed:
... printing was a complex craft carried out by fallible and inconsistent human beings of widely different capabilities ... the old printers were men, not abstractions, who had good days and bad ones; who got on each other's nerves and lost their tempers; who had moments of disastrous clumsiness; and who improvised and botched without hesitation whenever their tools or materials did not precisely meet the needs of the moment (Gaskell 1972, 47).
What differences are to be found between the texts of the two chapbooks mostly fall in the range of "changes" as opposed to "errors," such as those frequently seen in the work of the infamous Dublin printer Brereton (Neilands 1983).
[15] The "peace" of the chapbook version may be an attempt by printers to represent a dialect pronunciation of "pace." Taylor records a variant spelling "paice-egg" and notes that Tim Bobbin (John Collier) uses the spelling "pese" for "pace" (Taylor 1901, n.p.). Charlotte Burne records "peace eggers" collecting "pace eggs" c. 1820s (Burne 1909, 206). An extensive discussion of these issues is to appear in Cass et al. (forthcoming a).
[16] In spite of the Pace-Egg play tradition being an Easter custom, the introductory speeches in all The Peace Egg and The Peace Egg; or, St George's Annual Play ... chapbooks refer to it as being "... Christmas time." The exceptions are a related group of chapbooks published in Manchester by Abel Heywood and Looney and Pilling, and in Rochdale by Edwards and Bryning (Cass 2001b). All make the textual change to "... Easter time" and the title change to The Peace Egg; or, St George: An Easter Play.
[17] The doctor figure on page six of The Peace Egg Book, for example, is repeated at the head of the song "The Quack Doctor" on a Harkness broadside, printer series 707 (Memorial University, Lubrano Collection, sheet M1739; Mitchell Library Glasgow, Frank Kidson Collection, 2 (M9518):127). Likewise, the image of the devil with his trident on page ten of The Peace Egg Book is subsequently used by Harkness on a broadside, "The Orton Ghost; or, the Devil Outwitted," printer series 602 (Harris Public Library n.d.).
[18] The various references to traditional plays in Ireland in the seventeenth century have possibly been informed by the so far unsubstantiated observation of Thomas Crofton Croker that a play of this type was "... minutely enough described in a manuscript account of the City, written in 1685 ..." (Croker 1826-54, chapter 9, f. 11). For a critique of Croker's observation, see Pettitt (1994) and Boyes et al. (1999, 8-9).
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