Transcript of Treasures Revealed episode 15
Théo Martin (TM): Welcome to “Discover Library and Archives Canada: Your History, Your Documentary Heritage.” I’m your host, Théo Martin. Join us as we showcase treasures from our vaults; guide you through our many services; and introduce you to the people who acquire, safeguard and make known Canada’s documentary heritage.
Welcome to Treasures Revealed!
In this podcast series, we’ll be showcasing certain items in the Library and Archives Canada collection. Each episode, we’ll speak to a LAC employee and highlight an item that they consider a real “treasure” in our collection.
They may be rare items, perhaps unusual or valuable, or items with historical significance. Perhaps they will have a compelling or interesting story to go along with them. More importantly, all of them will showcase our vast and rich collection that is the shared documentary heritage of all Canadians.
Now, on to Episode 15, “The Prince of Canaday.”
He’s a brave and proper Prince,
And lives in London ever since,
Where many people see him every day,
For oft he walkes in the Exchange,
To see our customes to him strange,
By some he’s cald the Prince of Canaday.
TM: So goes a verse from this episode’s treasure, a ballad from 1628 called “Englands Honour revived.”
Our guest on this episode is LAC Senior Librarian Meaghan Scanlon.
Meaghan Scanlon (MS): My name is Meaghan Scanlon. I am a Senior Special Collections Librarian at Library and Archives Canada, where I have worked with the rare book collection for just over 10 years.
TM: Meaghan, tell us all about this episode’s treasure.
MS: “Englands Honour revived” is a broadside published around 1628. In case you don't know, a broadside is a piece of paper printed on one side. Broadsides can include posters—like if you've ever seen, you know, an old western where there's a wanted poster, that would be a broadside—, other public notices or, in this case, song lyrics. So broadsides are ephemeral publications, meaning that they weren't really meant to be preserved. I'd probably compare them to flyers that get handed to you on the street today or posters on telephone poles.
This particular broadside contains the lyrics of a song called “Englands Honour revived,” which is about a man named David Kirke and his brothers. The Kirkes were British so-called adventurers who actually captured the colony of New France and claimed it for Britain in 1629. Now, unfortunately for the Kirkes, the British ended up returning the colony to the French under a treaty a few years later.
TM: Like Meaghan mentioned, the Kirke brothers, under the banner of the Company of Adventurers to Canada, conquered the colony of New France in 1629, claiming it for the English Crown. They returned Quebec to France with the peace treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1632, but the lyrics of the ballad describe the Kirkes capturing a French fleet that was on its way to deliver supplies to New France in 1627, with the ballad also predicting that the French would soon give up their Quebec “plantation” to the English.
MS: The broadside is, there's no author's name really on it, but it is signed with the initials MP, which probably refers to a man named Martin Parker who was a well-known writer of this type of ballad. These ballads, the lyrics were sold on the streets for a penny, so they’re referred to as penny ballads. There's also a note on the page that says the song is to be sung to the tune of another song called ‘’King Henry’s Going to Boulogne.’’ So obviously in 1628, they didn't have any way to record music, but I guess there were popular songs that a lot of people would have known. So when you were writing new lyrics, like Martin Parker, it would make sense to reuse an old tune rather than trying, you know, to spread a new tune around, which would be really hard to do.
So I tried to find more information about the song “King Henry's Going to Boulogne,” but apparently it hasn't survived. But the title, I suggest, it must be about the siege of Boulogne, which happened during King Henry the VIII's invasion of France in the 1500s.
TM: Meaghan, two questions. How did you discover this broadside, and why do you consider it a treasure?
MS: So when I started working at LAC 10 years ago, in 2010, so, about that, my predecessor in the job gave me a tour of the collection, and she showed me a lot of the most notable items, and this was one of the things she showed me.
Well, the main reason this thing is notable is that it's thought to be the first publication in English that is dealing entirely with Canada. So there had been books that mentioned Canada before, but this one is actually like fully about Canada, and they think it's the first thing in English that was really, you know, focused on it. It's interesting, the song refers to Canada as Canaday with a “y” at the end. Whether that's just for the rhyme scheme or they were actually pronouncing that way, I really don't know.
The song also refers to the Prince of Canaday, and this is a reference to a boy named Amantacha. He was a Wendat boy, also known as Louis de Sainte-Foi. He was on one of the ships that was captured by the Kirke brothers, and there was a rumour among the Europeans that Amantacha was the son of the King of Canada, which is why they referred to him as the Prince.
And another really cool thing about this is, this document has, this particular copy of it, has a cool, like, origin story. It's the only copy known to survive, so, you know, very, very rare. As I mentioned, broadsides weren't meant to be preserved, but this one was actually found inside another book. So when bookbinders in the past would make their bindings, they would often use, like, waste paper that they just had lying around the studio to, you know, reinforce their work. And this broadside was used to strengthen the hinges on the front and back covers of a book that was bound just, like after the time it was printed. So it was actually found preserved inside the book when someone took it apart.
And the paper, if you look at it, it's torn in two pieces, and you can see, like, the tear, you know, the matches on both sides of the page. Fortunately, it was torn between the columns of text, so all the text is still there. And then, so, yeah, it was torn in two, and then one of the pieces was used at the front of the book and the other at the back. And so if you look at the paper, you can actually really clearly see the lines on it where glue was applied. So it's really interesting!
One of the things that is interesting about working with rare books is the books like physical, as sort of historical objects, to see the way they were made and how, you know, different things survived, like notes in the books and that kind of thing. So I think that's really cool.
And then, you know, on a silly note, one thing I think is funny about it is that the hero of the song is David Kirke, and the lyrics refer to him as Brave Captain Kirke. And of course when we think of Captain Kirk, we think of Captain James Tiberius Kirk from “Star Trek,” who was played by a Canadian, William Shatner. And so, I have always thought it would be a fun idea to get William Shatner to do a dramatic reading of this song, but unfortunately we don't know the tune, so he wouldn't be able to sing it.
TM: Meaghan, since we can’t get William Shatner to sing this for us, could you give us a rendition of this ballad?
MS: [laughing] No, because the tune doesn't survive! I mean, I bet you, since it's a ballad, right, you could probably sing it to the tune of “Greensleeves,” but I'm not going to do that. [laughing]
TM: How can our listeners see this broadside?
MS: This item, there's really nice high-res photos of it in LAC's rare books Flickr set. So if you want to go check it out, you can zoom in on it and there's, you know, some illustrations of ships at the top, and you can read the words and the references to Canaday and all that.
TM: You can also view the images of the “Englands Honour revived” broadside on LAC’s Treasures Revealed album, which is on Flickr too. We will update that album with each episode, giving you a chance to view the treasures that we will be highlighting. We will also add a link to the item in the Related links section on the episode page for this podcast.
Thank you for being with us. I’m Théo Martin, your host. You’ve been listening to “Discover Library and Archives Canada—where Canadian history, literature and culture await you.” A special thank you to our guest today, Meaghan Scanlon. Special thanks also to Isabel Larocque and Sandra Nicholls for their contributions to this episode.
The music in this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions.
This episode was produced, engineered and edited by David Knox, with additional editing and sound design by Tom Thompson.
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