The Peace Egg Book: an Anglo-Irish chapbook connection discovered - Research article: focus on traditional drama

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).