The pdf version of Volume 1 of the 'new edition' is linked below:

Popular Music of the Olden Time

An ABC file of the musical content is

Popular Music Volume 1 ABC file.

I'm classifying this as a late Beta version. There are still improvements to be made.

Work on Volume 2 is underway and development versions are in the repo.

If you do notice any errors or have any general comments then click on the 'Issues' text on the navigation bar above and then on the big green 'New Issue' button on the page it takes you to. Enter a title and your comment and if you return to the page at a later date you will be able to see progress on the issue/request etc.

For almost 10 years, William Chappell ran the music publishing company co-founded by his father that became Chappell and Co and is now part of Warner Chappell Music. He left the company in 1843 to pursue his interest in antiquarian music.

He extended and rewrote an earlier work, "A Collection of National English Airs, consisting of Ancient Song, Ballad and Dance Tunes" published in 1838 as "Popular Music of Olden Time" in 1855.

The two volumes of the latter work form the basis for this project.

Chappell was an important chronicler of the history of popular music in England and the two volumes are still important sources of information about their subject.

Of particular note is that he showed an early interest in musical forms that would be significant as interest in 'folk' music increased towards the later part of the 19th century.

Digitisation of historical texts has made these volumes (and others by Chappell) available online and there are currently a number of scans available in pdf form from archive.org and other sources.

Good online access to these volumes is provided by the National Museum of Scotland.

These are very useful resources and we should be thankful that they are available to a wider readership than those people who have access to a library with a physical copy.

However, the broad nature of these digitisation projects results in damaged and incomplete pages as the resources are not available to check the quality of each scan. Examples of 'damaged and incomplete' pages are library marks, reader annotations, water and ink damage, pages missing or assembled in the wrong order.

As we are fortunate to have multiple scans available of "Popular Music of Olden Time", it has been possible to create a composite version that is of a more accurate representation of each volume as it was originally published.

A scanned document was OCRed and then converted to a valid LaTex document. Appropriate text and paragraph styles were chosen for the different elements within the document. The musical examples were converted into ABC format then converted to EPS and finally discrete PDF documents.

The objective has been to replicate the content of the original works but using appropriate modern tools and methods to do so. This includes, typefaces designed for digital printing, computer typesetting of individual paragraphs and current letter and word spacing conventions.

Retained from the original works are all the textual and musical content and the front matter and graphics plates (in B&W to assist in printing). Page breaks occur close to their original position thereby ensuring the page numbers should be the same (expect there is now a page 216 that was missing in the original). Similarly with footnotes they should be retained and located on the same page (the exception is footnote b on page 328 that is now footnote a on page 329).

The text and musical examples have been checked on multiple occasions but I am sure that differences still exist. If you notice errors or omissions please enter a bug/feature request or push a change to me and I will attempt to rectify the situation.

In Volume 1 Chappell includes the paragraph:

In the Pepys’ Collection, i. 68, is a ballad of “The lamentable burning of the city of Cork, by the lightning which happened the last day of May, 1622, after the prodigious battle of the stares” (i.e., starlings), “which fought most strangely over and near the city the 12th and 14th May, 1621.”

In 1638 a man called William Chappell became Bishop of Cork and Ross.