This paper examines the street literature – broadside ballads, chapbooks, almanacs, gallows speeches, elegies and advertisements – circulating in Scotland between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. It demonstrates how much more of this cheap print was produced than now survives and argues that Scotland had a far larger market for these ephemeral publications than has been appreciated. It emphasises the extensive English influence on popular reading matter available north of the border while at the same time illustrating the distinctively Scottish aspects of this material.

As for an illustration, I attached an image from the British Museum – BM Sat 2678 – Sawney in the Boghouse (London: Charles Mosely, 1745).