Editing Miser (section)

===Broadside ballads===
[[File:Old Miser ballad.gif|thumb|The broadside ballad of "The Old Miser", early 19th century]]
In the realm of popular poetry, there were a range of narrative [[Broadside (music)|broadside]] ballads concerning misers from the 17th century onward. Some of the earliest deal with the grain speculators who caused such suffering to the poorest.  A representative example is "The Wretched Miser" (1682), prefaced as "a brief Account of a covetous Farmer, who bringing a Load of Corn to Market, swore the Devil should have it before he would take the honest Market price". The devil closes with the bargain and on accounting day carries off the farmer as well.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/21994/xml|title=EBBA 21994 - UCSB English Broadside Ballad Archive|website=ebba.english.ucsb.edu}}</ref> The social message is carried by the refrain that follows each stanza: "O Farmers, covetous Farmers,/ why would you pinch the Poor?" The religious aspect is dealt with in the contemporary "A Looking-glass for a covetous Miser" by [[Thomas Jordan (poet)|Thomas Jordan]]. Here a West Country entrepreneur and a poor husbandman debate the respective merits of anxious profit-making and contentment.  The miser laments the current low price of grain and resolves not to sell or plant more until the price rises.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/33461/xml|title=EBBA 33461 - UCSB English Broadside Ballad Archive|website=ebba.english.ucsb.edu}}</ref> The theme continued into the early 19th century, where a farmer is again the subject of "The life and awful death of a rich miser ".<ref>James G. Hepburn, ''A Book of Scattered Leaves: Poetry of Poverty in Broadside Ballads'' Bucknell University 2000 [https://books.google.com/books?id=SlhlFB07kqIC&pg=PA201 p.201]</ref>

Another common subject of these ballads was the dilemma of the miser's daughter unable to marry the man of her choice and the stratagems employed to overcome her father. In "Bite Upon the Miser", printed in the late 18th century, a sailor dresses up as the devil and scares the miser and the parson he intended as her husband into allowing the match.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://images.library.yale.edu/walpoleweb/oneitem.asp?imageId=lwlpr25361|title=Lewis Walpole Library Digital Collection|work=yale.edu}}</ref> Much the same situation occurs in "The Politic Lovers or the Windsor Miser Outwitted", where it is a butcher who impersonates the devil and scares the miser into handing over his riches.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/static/images/sheets/20000/15693.gif|title=Bodleian Library}}</ref> In about 1800 there appeared an English broadside ballad called "The old miser" which was to serve as basis for what grew into a [[Folk music|folk song]] with multiple versions.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.vwml.org/roudnumber/3913|title=Vaughan Williams Memorial Library - Welcome to the English Folk Dance and Song Society|work=vwml.org}}</ref> The scene is set in London, where a miser's daughter is courted by a sailor and the father arranges for him to be press-ganged to get him out of the way. As well as persisting in England, there are also versions in the US and [[Tristan de Cunha]].<ref>Folk Songs of the Catskills, State University of New York, 1982, [https://books.google.com/books?id=IEmkHeB35XEC&dq=Catskills+miser&pg=PA187 pp.187-9]</ref> Misers were notorious tricksters, so ingenuity transcending barely credible impersonations was generally needed. "Bite upon bite or the miser outwitted by the country lass" (1736–63) does not feature the miser's daughter but another sort of damsel in distress. A girl bears a child out of wedlock and is advised by her mother to name it Maidenhead and offer it for sale. A rich miser closes the bargain and is eventually forced to support the child by the magistrate.<ref>Scarlet Bowen, ''The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction'', London 2010 [https://books.google.com/books?id=XZvGAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA185 footnote on p.185]</ref>

Still another ballad theme was the privations of the miser's servant, a comic situation in drama and fiction also, and here principally concerned with how little food the household has to live on. One example is "The Miser's Man (dating from between 1863 and 1885).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/static/images/sheets/05000/03336.gif|title=Bodleian Library}}</ref> At the start of the 19th century, the theme had figured as an episode in [[Robert Anderson (poet)|Robert Anderson]]'s "Croglin Watty". A simple-minded countryman down from the fells, Watty was hired by the real-life [[Carlisle, Cumbria|Carlisle]] miser Margery Jackson (1722–1812) and served her for a [[Calendar year#quarter|quarter]]. The ballad mixes sung verses with prose description, both in Cumberland dialect: 
{{blockquote|<poem>Neist my deame she e'en starv'd me, that niver liv'd weel;
Her hard words and luiks wou'd ha'e freeten'd the deil:

She hed a lang beard, for aw t' warl leyke a billy goat, wi' a kil-dried frosty feace: and then the smawest leg o' mutton in aw Carel market sarrad the cat, me, and hur for a week.<ref>''The Songs and Ballads of Cumberland'', George Routledge & Sons, 1866, [https://archive.org/stream/songsballadsofcu00gilprich#page/330/mode/2up/search/Croglin pp. 330–3]</ref></poem>}}
Dame Margery is not named in the poem because at the time of writing (1805) she was still alive and known to be litigious. We know that it is meant to be her from the fact that in William Brown's painting of the ballad, "Hiring Croglin Watty at Carlisle Cross", it is she who figures in the foreground.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/margery-jackson-17221812-hiring-croglin-watty-at-carlisle-cross-144228|title=Margery Jackson (1722–1812), Hiring Croglin Watty at Carlisle Cross|work=[[Art UK]]}}</ref> About 1811, just before her death, Brown had already devoted another painting to her alone as she tramped through the town.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/margery-jackson-the-carlisle-miser-144225|title=Margery Jackson, the Carlisle Miser|work=[[Art UK]]}}</ref> That she is still amusedly remembered there is witnessed by the modern ''Miser! The Musical'' (2011), based on her life.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.journallive.co.uk/culture-newcastle/culture-latest-news/2011/06/07/margery-jackson-s-remarkable-life-inspires-miser-the-musical-61634-28831039|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130421005724/http://www.journallive.co.uk/culture-newcastle/culture-latest-news/2011/06/07/margery-jackson-s-remarkable-life-inspires-miser-the-musical-61634-28831039|url-status=dead|archive-date=April 21, 2013|title=Margery Jackson's remarkable life inspires Miser! The Musical|author=Tony Henderson|date=6 June 2011|work=journallive}}</ref>