[Two Victorian Welsh street ballads, one with engraved advertisement for 'FINE TEAS AND TOBACCO'.] Two poems printed together: 'Cerdd y Tobacco' and 'Can y Bachgen Main'.

Author: 
[Nineteenth-century Welsh street ballads; tobacco; smoking]
Publication details: 
No place or date. [Welsh, late Victorian.]
£100.00
SKU: 22249

4pp, 16mo (15.5 x 9 cm). Paginated [1]-4. Bifolium. Disbound. A frail survival, aged and worn. The first leaf (pp.1-2) carries the poem 'Cerdd y Tobacco' ('The Tobacco Poem'), in five eight-line stanzas, with the title followed by a half-page stock woodcut (evidently from a tobacconist's advertisement) of an oriental figure seated on crates on the dockside, with sailing ship in the background. At the foot is engraved: 'FINE TEAS AND TOBACCO'. The second leaf (pp.3-4) carries the poem 'Can y Bachgen Main' ('Song of the Slender Boy'), in six eight-line stanzas. At foot of last page, in floral enclose: 'DIWEDD.' The National Library of Wales has variants of both poems with publishers' imprints, but no other copy of this publication of the two together has been located. Cardiff University has a copy of anothyer printing of 'Can y Bachgen Main', which it ascribes to Richard Davies ('Mynyddog') (1833-1877).