Broadsides

(23rd May 2021)

(opening music)

Liz

Hello and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel

And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together and love history, and food, and making things, so what have you been making recently?

Liz

I got hold of various dried fruits and things, ‘cause I’ve decided rather than buying all the different various tea blends, ‘cause I do currently have like 30 kinds of tea, I’m just gonna buy leaves and misc and do my own mixes

Hazel

That’s quite ominous, just miscellaneous tea

Liz

Well I’ve got various kinds of leaves, and then I’ve got some dried fruit, some dried peel, and pink peppercorns, ‘cause it turns out that’s really nice in tea

Hazel

Oh wow

Liz

And some burdock root

Hazel

That sounds like a fun time, just

Liz

It’s gonna be fun to play around and make all sorts of concoctions

Hazel

Making potions

Liz

It’s gonna be good, it feels very witchy

Hazel

I like that. But wholesome, because it’s tea

Liz

Yeah

Hazel

Awesome

Liz

What about you?

Hazel

I haven’t really cooked that much, apart from the usual, but it’s ages since I’ve baked something, I need to do some baking, I need to make some actual good hot cross buns, ‘cause the last ones I made, a few weeks ago, I’m pretty sure I used the same yeast I did last year and that’s why they didn’t work

Liz

That might be it, yeah

Hazel

Yeah, so I’ve got some new yeast. Yeah, apart from that, just been doing a lot of knitting and things, but I haven’t...just been working on ongoing projects. I am starting an embroidery project soon, which for me is exciting because I haven’t done that much embroidery and I normally like to have a pattern and I don’t for this one. It’s a piece for my Grandma’s birthday, it’s gonna be an embroidered portrait of her, using a picture of her when she started nursing in the 50s, ‘cause it’s her 90th birthday this year so I’m...yeah I’m gonna attempt to embroider a person

Liz

That’s awesome

Hazel

Yeah, I, yeah, it’s an important thing to her, she talks about it a lot, so I was like “oh, maybe she’ll like this. Oh no, now I have to do this, and I’ve got two months, so we’ll see”

Liz

You’ve got to months

Hazel

Yeah, it should be fine. I mean it’s not going to be massive, I’m not doing a tapestry

Liz

Can you imagine though?

Hazel

I can imagine. I mean, I was worried that she might not want a picture of herself on the wall, but I personally would love a full-size wall tapestry of me looking very cool. I would hang that up

Liz

Who wouldn’t? I feel like that’s the rule, you’re only allowed a picture of yourself if it’s massive

Hazel

Yeah. I mean, there’s definitely precedent for that. Lots of ye old rich people had big paintings of themselves in their entrance halls right?

Liz

Yeah. Preferably over a fireplace

Hazel

Yeah, preferably with one boob out

Liz

Just the one?

Hazel

Tasteful, you know?

Liz

Your favourite boob, like that one mistress of Charles II, I don’t remember which one

Hazel

Oh, was there one who, you know, like your good side, there’s always the same one out

Liz

Yeah

Hazel

I love it. I don’t know which one my favourite is, but, as this is a family podcast

Liz

Yeah, I was gonna say, we should...let’s move on

Hazel

Ok, what are we talking about today?

Liz

So, you know how I do folk music history youtube things?

Hazel

Mm-hmm

Liz

Well a lot of the ones I’ve been doing recently have been from broadsides, so I thought I’d do broadsides

Hazel

Ooh, excellent

Liz

‘Cause I didn’t actually know that much about them

Hazel

Ok. So, I know what they are in that I know we are not talking about a ship firing lots of the cannons right?

Liz

Correct

Hazel

We’re talking about music sheets

Liz

We are. So, they’re called broadsides because they’re big pieces of paper, not

Hazel

Oh ok

Liz

Not surprisingly I suppose, like you get broadsheet newspapers which are just the ones with really big pages

Hazel

Oh suddenly that makes sense

Liz

Yeah, so, we’re in the 17th century, people have just got access to - in Europe I should say - have just got access to moveable type printing

Hazel

Oooh shiny

Liz

And just easy printing generally, so suddenly it’s very easy to distribute things like flyers, news, sometimes just doggerel

Hazel

Just any random rubbish

Liz

Yeah. Yeah, political stuff, woodcut illustrations, for a penny a go. You would have people in village squares or wandering the streets of London selling just sheets of paper with any or all of these things on them for a penny

Hazel

That’s not bad

Liz

But they are probably most well-known now for the ballads

Hazel

Ok, so like the popular music of the day was something you could just buy on the street

Liz

Oh yeah, or even just see...sometimes it would be pasted up like a poster

Hazel

Oh that’s cute

Liz

Often not with musical notation, but apparently some of them would say “to the tune of Greensleeves” and things like that, the more well-known songs

Hazel

Oh that makes sense, ‘cause I guess maybe not a lot of people are gonna be learning music notation unless you’re a nice young lady

Liz

Who would probably be buying books of sheet music and not the terrible, vulgar street music

Hazel

Not the popular music

Liz

(silly posh voice) Well some of them are about ladies being pregnant! Or gentlemen having their way with ladies! And I don’t know what this voice is

Hazel

I don’t know what you’re talking about, this one is clearly just about an agricultural machine

Liz

I mean, I’ve told you about my favourite ballad, which let’s just say uses carpentry as a euphemism. So yeah, there was a company of stationers in London - so at this point stationers are, they sell stationery, they print and publish things - so there was a stationers’ company in London in the latter half of the 16th century, tried to register all of the ballads in circulation

Hazel

All of them?

Liz

Yeah. They recorded over 2000

Hazel

Oh wow

Liz

But it’s generally considered that there were probably more than that. ‘Cause, again, you could just get a whole load printed and sell them for a penny, paste them up on the walls of pubs

Hazel

So were these...who was publishing these? Or was it just individual people like “oh I could make some money from this”?

Liz

It seems to have evolved from the concept of the wandering musician, from minstrels. So you’d have what were known as balladeers actually getting the songs printed and selling them to make a bit of extra money

Hazel

Wow that is a fantastic name

Liz

Including singing songs in the streets and then selling the sheet music, almost like buskers selling CDs

Hazel

That’s good advertising I guess

Liz

It is, and I mean it works for buskers

Hazel

Indeed

Liz

But the stationers that I mentioned, they had this, basically because they were printing and publishing they just had total control, so you’d have, you know, protestant stationers printing bad things about the catholics, and catholic stationers printing bad things about the protestants

Hazel

I see

Liz

And a lot of them did get quite political, the broadsides, ‘cause again this wasn’t just songs. Although there was one that may be a poem, may be a song, called Cromwell’s Panegyrick

Hazel

What is that?

Liz

So, it’s a form of complimentary verse. It’s sometimes used synonymously with eulogy but it’s not necessarily after the person’s died

Hazel

Ok so it’s…

Liz

Except this one was published in Ireland, and if you know anything about Cromwell’s activities in Ireland you will know that it was incredibly satirical

Hazel

Ok

Liz

It was very much a roast of Cromwell. The text of it’s available a lot of places online but it’s basically, it’s a full on roast, it’s like “ah well, he’ll be very busy keeping his big nose in everyone’s business” and that kind of thing. It’s not actually saying anything outright against him because, you know, you couldn’t really in Ireland, if you got caught that would be a problem, so it’s...yeah. And that’s one of the most widely distributed ones we think

Hazel

Ok. Well, I mean everybody loves a bit of making fun of the people in power

Liz

Especially the ones that do a colonialism on you. That was the wrong word, but you know what I mean. Prepositions. It’s been a long day. So yeah, by the 1600s you also have what are called chapmen, which, again, I love, possibly the etymology of the surname Chapman

Hazel

Ok, is that to do with chapbooks?

Liz

Exactly, ‘cause you would have...people would either buy several and bind them together themselves, or publish these chapbooks. So that’s just a short, almost like a pamphlet of these songs, poems et cetera

Hazel

Ok

Liz

‘Cause with the broadsides being so big you could often fold them up into these little booklets, or cut and bind them into chapbooks, so you had chapmen actually selling the booklet itself rather than the individual broadsides by late 1600s, early 1700s, and Robert Burns and Samuel Pepys are both known do have published these chapbooks

Hazel

Ok. Yeah, I guess Robert Burns seems like the sort of person that would, being a poet, but Samuel Pepys is a surprising one

Liz

I mean, we know he just liked to document things

Hazel

Yeah

Liz

That was kind of his whole jam, but I mean, Pepys is probably responsible for a lot of the 1600s songs that we still know about, because he was a well-known figure, so his collections survived

Hazel

Oh fantastic. So there’s an actually original large collection of them

Liz

I don’t know if there’s a whole collection of them, but he was definitely a big force in preserving a lot of these songs from that time

Hazel

Ok

Liz

A lot of which were a lot more everyday, ‘cause you know you have these big dramatic ballads that the rich people would be singing, you know, very opera-type stuff, but then you have a lot of the broadside ballads, again, a lot of them very innuendo-laden, or sometimes even just outright, or just about drinking, or being sad that you’re poor. Just all of our favourite folk motifs, I think pretty much, show up in broadsides

Hazel

Ah, ok. Is that why sometimes you get so many versions of the same song, ‘cause it might have been published by multiple people?

Liz

Well yeah ‘cause, I mean folk music is very much an oral tradition, I think, and especially in this period

Hazel

I would have thought that

Liz

So you’d have spreading and changing as people move around, and then all these versions get published that all end up as either different but very similar songs, or 200 versions of the same song that all have the same title and different words, and sometimes also different tunes, because, again, there’s not, you don’t really have a melody included. Although apparently at the turn of the 18th century some of them did have staves of music printed on them, but they were largely decorative. I was reading, I think it was the National Library of Scotland article on broadsides but I read a lot of articles on broadsides this week, was saying that most of the musical notation on broadsides sounds absolutely awful, because it’s just what looks nice. Kind of like you know how, you get decorative runes on things and when you try to read them it’s not even pronounceable?

Hazel

I guess it’s just a way to be like “hey, this is music, this is a song”

Liz

Yeah, it’s shorthand. But again, most people wouldn’t have been able to read music, I feel like most people can’t read music now even

Hazel

Yeah

Liz

‘Cause you kind of, you learn it in school and then you forget

Hazel

Yeah, and I guess I suppose today when you’re learning an instrument you tend to start with the learning to read music and then you learn that along with the instrument, but back in the past when a lot of people did play an instrument, it wasn’t just a rich people thing, but you would, that would be something you would learn by ear first and then later maybe you would learn some notation, but that was a tradition that was mostly passed on by ear, so it makes sense that there would be this big demand for songs, and for new music to play, but using the tunes that people already know

Liz

Oh yeah, and I mean like I say with it being an oral tradition you also have...you hear someone singing and you mishear a word or you don’t quite hear something you just stick in what fits, and again you end up with 200 versions of the same song

Hazel

I mean I know I do that a lot just listening to the radio, like you know in Mr Brightside where it sounds like “turning snakes into the sea”, but it’s not?

Liz

Oh yeah

Hazel

I’ve been singing that for like 10 years

Liz

I mean until I was like 12 I thought that the lyrics to Eye of the Tiger was “it’s the cream of the fight”. You know, like the cream is the best bit, I thought it was “you’re the best one, you’re the cream of the crop”. So yeah, I’m sure that kind of thing must have happened in the 17th century as well

Hazel

Oh yeah, people are people

Liz

But yeah, if you want a big collection of them, a man called Sir Frederick Maddon in the mid-19th century collected 30,000 ballads

Hazel

That’s a lot of ballads

Liz

Yeah. I mean, that just shows you how popular and widespread these were

Hazel

Where did he keep them all?

Liz

I don’t know, but apparently they’re now in the Cambridge University Library. I think at least some of them are accessible online, I may have a poke around later

Hazel

Awesome

Liz

If it is available online I will tweet a link to it. But yeah, I feel like it actually might have been easier to collect them by Maddon’s time, because they were...you could also get them in what were called slipsides, which is just a slip of paper with words in, which were actually sometimes printed in newspapers

Hazel

Ok. Could you also get, I guess, published collections of them by this point?

Liz

Oh absolutely. In fact, the increasing availability of cheap books is possibly to blame for broadsides dying out in the UK. I will get to why I said the UK in a minute

Hazel

Ah

Liz

Well because they cost a penny, you’re in the 1850s at this point, you have penny dreadfuls, so it’s like are you going to spend your penny on a couple of song lyrics or a penny dreadful or an installment of a novel or a magazine, because fashion is becoming more of a thing beyond the very richest at this point

Hazel

Ok, so you’ve got choices now

Liz

Yeah. And like I say, you do still occasionally find songs printed in newspapers, especially ones that someone’s written to commemorate some big event, which mostly didn’t gain the same popularity as the earlier ballads, but yeah, they die out by sort of the late Victorian period, really, in the UK. In America you get broadsides of hymns

Hazel

Oh ok

Liz

Right from when they first started being able to easily print things over there, right the way up ‘til actually the 20s, the 1920s

Hazel

Oh wow

Liz

Both as broadsides either handed out or pasted up in or around churches, and also new hymns being printed in newspapers in the 1920s

Hazel

Ok

Liz

‘Cause, you know, it’s just a much more loudly Christian country than the UK I think, and always has been

Hazel

Yeah, I guess. Wow

Liz

Yeah which, I always wondered how hymns spread around when people weren’t moving as much, but I guess broadsides are it

Hazel

Yeah, I mean there’s definitely...we’ve got at home a couple of early 20th century song books that I think at least one of them has a quite few hymns in, so I guess if you hear one in church and you’re like “oh I like this song”

Liz

It slaps

Hazel

Yeah, this hymn slaps, you’re probably going to be singing it around anyway, not just in church. I feel like an example of this is there’s a song called The Old Churchyard, which started off as an American hymn, I think it was written in the late 19th century, it’s not super old, but now it’s become part of the folk tradition, people sing it just as a folk song, so yeah, I think things tend to...if it slaps it’ll spread

Liz

That happened with a lot of spirituals and gospel songs isn’t it

Hazel

Yeah, there’s quite a few spirituals in these old song books as well. Hymns, popular songs, all that kind of thing

Liz

I mean, of course, that kind of thing is then what evolved into most popular music now, like most popular genres of music come from that spread of black religious music in the US, but that’s a whole other thing that were are very much not experts on in any way

Hazel

We’ll leave that to a music history podcast

Liz

But yeah, apparently broadsides still get published now, is what I didn’t know, kind of like how there’s still fandom zines floating about and you just don’t really think about it until you see someone mention one

Hazel

Oh right

Liz

These small folk traditions often don’t die out, they just become smaller and smaller and smaller until you basically have to already be in the know to know about them, but you can still find them

Hazel

Wow

Liz

I don’t know where, I could not find out where, but I found a lot of folk music websites saying that broadsides are still a thing, which is incredibly exciting because there’s part of me that’s just like “one day, one day I’ll just be walking through town and I’ll see one”

Hazel

There’s something really nice about that thought, just having somebody putting music up on the walls in the street for anyone to read and work out how to play

Liz

Yeah. Bring this back as a bigger thing

Hazel

Yeah, can we?

Liz

I see so much, you know, small independent artists are cool, but rather than seeing a sticker with someone’s name written in a weird font on it, I think I would rather see a slipside

Hazel

Yeah, that’s a great marketing technique, actually, all you indies out there, go start pasting your music up on walls

Liz

Well yeah I mean, as I mentioned, broadsides often had woodcut illustrations on as well, so partner up with an artist that you know, get them to do some cool pictures for it, post your songs up on a wall

Hazel

Oh yeah

Liz

Let’s bring this back

Hazel

It’d be really cool

Liz

So yeah, that is the history of the broadsides, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who always assumed that when a song was called a broadside it used to be sung on boats

Hazel

I did think they might be nautical-based sea shanties

Liz

I mean I’m sure that docks would probably be a good place to go and buy your broadsides

Hazel

Yeah I imagine you could get sea shanties on a broadside if they were popular

Liz

I’ve seen them

Hazel

Amazing. I mean yeah I guess that’s one way you could learn new sea shanties

Liz

Yeah, since I mentioned it at the start I’m gonna put a link to my folk music youtube in the episode description always be plugging

Hazel

I mean if you’ve got a podcast, mention the thing

Liz

So, what is this week’s local larder?

Hazel

Ok. I’ve gone a bit obscure for this one. Well I guess it’s not obscure depending on where you live or who your relations are. So, I’m going to be talking about käsespätzle

Liz

What is that?

Hazel

It’s basically German mac n cheese

Liz

Ok, I do love a bit of mac n cheese

Hazel

It is delicious. I was thinking about regional things that I could talk about and I realised that I tend to talk about ones that are from the UK, so I realised I should branch out a little bit, and käsespätzle is something that I have eaten, and also, as I will explain, this is why you can actually eat schnitzel with noodles, ‘cause I know that’s a thing that people tend to be a bit confused about in the Sound of Music, Julie Andrews sings about

Liz

Oh yeah, I knew I recognised it from something, but I couldn’t place it

Hazel

Yeah, Julie Andrews sings about eating schnitzel with noodles, which, as anyone who has ever heard of schnitzel or been to Austria knows, you don’t have schnitzel with paste but I think, I don’t have inside intel on this, but I’m pretty sure that the noodles that they’re referring to are kind of not actually noodles, but it’s spätzle. Käsespätzle is like the mac n cheese version of the dish, which I’ll talk about a bit later, but a spätzle is like a tiny little egg dumpling. It, I guess it’s kind of like pasta but it’s more like a doughy pasta? It’s like pasta dough, but tiny

Liz

Ok

Hazel

Yeah, they’re just kind of stodgy and tasty, and they’re eaten kind of all over Europe, in slightly different forms, but they are really popular in Germany and Austria as something you can have as a side with different things, you can have just your spätzle, your little noodle-dumplings with a sauce on it, or you can have it as a side for various dishes, so that’s why you can, in fact, have schnitzel with noodles if you have your spätzle on the side. Yeah, so it’s kind of, it’s a handy carb, and the name is thought to have come from spätzen, which is the German for little sparrow

Liz

Aww, that’s nice

Hazel

Yeah I know. ‘Cause they’re just a tiny little pinch of dough, just tiny little things. And actually, it’s extra adorable because spätzle is apparently a cute nickname in Germany, so like “my little spätzle”

Liz

Aww!

Hazel

It’s so cute, I want somebody to call me that. So yeah, these dumplings are...the oldest written mention is 1725, but they’re thought to be older because dumplings, everyone loves dumplings, but they are particularly associated, in terms of käsespätzle, which is cheese dumplings, they’re associated with the Swabian region of Germany, which is a region in Bavaria in southern Germany and, as with all the best local larders, there is a spätzle museum

Liz

Amazing

Hazel

In Swabia

Liz

I would like to go there please

Hazel

Uh-huh. It’s in the town of Bad Waldseer, which is just a fantastic name. It’s got 3 floors of the history of spätzle. So, on to the tools. This is one of the things that made me want to do this as a local larder, because the tools for making spätzle are just some of the most weird-looking things I’ve ever seen. You can kind of tell it’s a kitchen implement but it also could be something used for curling your eyelashes, or an obscure torture device. They are fantastic. I am gonna put some pictures of these tools on the twitter. So, the traditional way to make it, which the purists say it’s not a spätzle unless you use this, is using a board. So you get the dough, and you have this little wooden board and a slice, and you use those to make the tiny little dumplings, and there are apparently pictures of medieval knights with spätzle boards

Liz

Ok

Hazel

On campaign

Liz

They’ve got their priorities

Hazel

Absolutely! Can’t go anywhere without your spätzle. Yeah. So, these are eaten all over Europe but super super popular in the Swabian region of Germany, and they were often made with spelt flour in the older versions, because it grows quite well there, so it’s thought that that’s why there’s this connection, and if you’ve ever had...have you ever had spelt bread? Or spelt anything

Liz

Yes! Spelt bread is the best one to have with tomato soup

Hazel

It’s so good

Liz

My hot take

Hazel

That is a hot take I can get behind, spelt is delicious. I know that wheat is the main grain that we tend to eat in Europe and America today, but there were many different kind of grains, I mean there are many different grains all over the world, but there are many kinds of grains that were used in the past as well, and spelt is one that should totally come back, because it is very healthy and also very delicious

Liz

I think spelt is a kind of wheat, but it’s not the kind of wheat that we monoculture

Hazel

Yeah, it’s different kinds of grains and different kinds of variations of them

Liz

Yeah, I think it’s got...I realised as I started talking that it’s hard to describe but it has a deeper flavour, like a rounder flavour, if you know what I mean?

Hazel

Yeah, I get that

Liz

It tastes good for you

Hazel

It tastes like it’s got body

Liz

Tastes like it’s got vitamins

Hazel

But also, I dunno, it tastes, I guess it tastes a bit sourdough-ish, even if you’re not making sourdough, does that make sense?

Liz

I get what you mean, ‘cause again it’s that depth of flavour

Hazel

Yeah

Liz

But, I mean, most homemade breads are gonna taste more like bread than what you get in a supermarket, I think

Hazel

More bready bread

Liz

I don’t mean that in a hipster way, I just...homemade bread is really nice

Hazel

It’s very nice. It’s very good. Oh man, especially European breads, like, we don’t have great bread in the UK, I mean we do sometimes, but if you want great bread, go to a Polish bakery, hot tip. Yeah, so, they were often made using spelt flour in the past, but obviously it’s mostly wheat that’s used now, although a lot of people in Germany still use spelt flour, because it’s a bit more available over there, and käsespätzle, so the mac n cheese version, is basically these dumplings but fried, so it probably came about where people had them leftover the next day, you know, like fried rice is leftover rice, and you fry it and you make it into stuff

Liz

Yep

Hazel

Kind of the same deal, you have leftover spätzle and you fry them with onions and maybe some bacon, and you put some cheese on top, and it’s delicious

Liz

It sounds amazing

Hazel

Yeah it’s...crispy onion, and the cheese and the little pasta, gosh it’s so good

Liz

You’re making me hungry

Hazel

It’s so good. I’ve actually never had the standard mac n cheese, which also looks really tasty

Liz

It is!

Hazel

But yeah, no, this one is so good. Sorry, I just a brain-freeze there, you can just cut that bit out, but yeah, if you are interested in making käsespätzle I will link the recipe on the twitter, and I am also going to put the pictures of these spätzle tools on the twitter, because they are fantastic, and they have fantastic names. One of them is a spätzle-schob, like a press that you can use, that’s another way of making them, apart from this board, there’s a knoepfle mühle, which looks like some kind of round...it’s like a saucepan, but with an extra handle that you turn around, and it makes...I don’t know how it does it

Liz

You’re gonna have to send me all the spelling of this by the way, for the transcript, ‘cause I do not speak German in any way, shape, or form

Hazel

I absolutely will. I don’t really speak German, but I can pronounce it enough to sound like I speak it, which is awkward because I, so I lived in Austria for 6 months

Liz

You did

Hazel

While I was teacher training, and I know a little bit of German, and I’m quite good at pronouncing it, so I would say something very small to people and then they would start talking to me, thinking that I spoke German, and then I’d be like “I’m sorry, I don’t know what is happening”. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to learn German, because my entire job was in English, and now that I don’t live there anymore I’m learning German, so...but yeah

Liz

Better late than never I guess?

Hazel

Exactly! But yeah, you should definitely get a load of these tools, I’ll put a link to them on twitter, as well as a recipe should you want to make your own käsespätzle because it is delicious and dumpling-y goodness

Liz

So this needs to be one of those times that you say you’ll tweet something and actually do

Hazel

I absolutely will

Liz

‘Cause sometimes you don’t, and I need this

Hazel

It’s such a good winter food. I had it at a Christmas market, and it was amazing

Liz

So thank you for listening. If you want to support us we are on patreon at, not at, patreon doesn’t have at, we’re on patreon as breadandthread where there is a patreon exclusive discord server, there’s monthly recipes, and - I might put up my mac n cheese recipe - and if you give us 10, I think it’s 10 dollars, or 8 pounds, a month, we will make a bonus episode about anything you like

Hazel

Anything

Liz

Anything

Hazel

We are also on twitter at breadandthread, where you can see things that we’ve been talking about on the podcast in picture form, providing I remember to post them, you can see teasers for upcoming episodes, and keep up with what’s going on on the podcast

Liz

We are also on tumblr at breadandthread, and if you want to say hi or suggest an episode or, I don’t know, correct our pronunciation, not that I’m saying that Hazel has pronounced anything wrong, I genuinely don’t know, I just needed a third thing

Hazel

I’ve been doing it very confidently, but I’m probably going to get a lot of Germans telling me that I’ve done it wrong

Liz

But yeah, you can email breadandthreadpodcast@gmail.com, and we will be back in a couple of weeks