Dying Words Captain Robert Kidd (1 results)

Broadside, on laid paper. Two woodcut illustrations. Text in two columns. 11-3/4x8-3/4 inches. Broadside elegies in verse first appeared in London around the time of Captain Kidd's execution for piracy in 1701. Interestingly, American versions did not appear until nearly a century later, in the last decade of the 18th century, based on an English ballad Captain Kid's Farewel to the Seas: "The ballad was blessed with a familiar tune. It almost immediately came to the Colonies, where it was so popular for a hundred years that the rude verse of its twenty two five-line stanzas was worn down to easier smoothness and its narrative naïvely reworked . Thus the rather accurate news ballad of 1701 became the almost completely fictitious cry of a lost soul by 1801, horror mounting to a climax and the emotions and senses engulfed the while in the multitudinous repetition of the melancholy 'as I sailed.' Simple American folk appropriated the ballad, adapting it to the art, tradition, and etiquette they knew" (William H. Bonner, "The Ballad of Captain Kidd" American Literature, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Jan. 1944), pp. 362-380). ESTC and AAS record several difference versions. The relief cuts here would seem to conform to those used by Nathaniel Coverly, Jr. in Boston. All versions are very rare. ESTC W6962 (recording AAS only) Folds, separations, loss to woodcut at upper left, tipped to a larger sheet Broadside, on laid paper. Two woodcut illustrations. Text in two columns. 11-3/4x8-3/4 inches.…