Conrad Bladey's Beuk O' Newcassel Sangs

During the last many decades, yeah even centuries, so great has been the progress of education amongst the humbler classes of society, that many of those eccentricities so often seized upon by our local poets as subjects of humourous satire, are fast disappearing, and ere many more years shall have elapsed, the Songs of our Local Bards will be the only memorials of the peculiar characteristics of this ancient border town. Should an occasional coarseness of language meet the eye, let not the fastidious reader forget, that such were the modes of expression used by the parties described, and that elegance of language would be as much out of place as are the polished classical sentences of Shenstone's rustices, so often and so justly a theme of censure.

— Adapted from the Newcastle Song Book or Tyne-Side Songster,
W.& T. Fordyce, Newcastle Upon Tyne.