Punch,  20 (1851), 212.

Ballad for Old-Fashioned Farmers

Anon

Genre:

Ballad, Drollery

Subjects:

Exhibitions, Agriculture, Invention, Technology, Steam-power, Political Economy


    Written in a yokel-style, presents the narrator's doubts about the agricultural use of some of the objects on show at 'your Palace of Crystal'. Argues that 'minerals, and physic, and chymical drugs [...] wun't affoord no relief to the land', and that 'gurt big steam-engines for fairings and toys, / Which I dare say amuses the Manchester boys' will only 'screw up the prices of grain'. Yearns for the 'Fair as was held [...] in the old turnpike-days afore railways was know'd' and thinks the 'wicked inventions for grindun the earth [...] be nought wurth'.



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