Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this

week coming to you live from the Lowry in Sulfur!

My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Aniches Zinski, Andrew Hunter Murray and James

Harkin and once again we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts

from the last seven days at a no particular order. Here we go. Starting with fact number

one and that's my fact this week. My fact is that in 17th century Europe people used to

sing each other the news. That's how they got the news. It would be sung at their face.

That's been a f...

Like that. That kind of thing. No, this is the thing. In the 17th century, illiteracy rates were so high

that if they did publish newspapers no one was really buying them because they couldn't read them.

So what they ended up doing was they were taking classic, classic ballads of the time but then applying

just the news of the data them and so people would go on the streets and they would start singing

the news and people would memorize the songs that they were singing and they would pass it on

and pass it on and that's how the news got around and so it was for everything from political

news to sentimental stories, religious news, royal rumours, medical advice. They did like an

unfindly at the end with a dog on a surf bar doesn't it? They did have a paywall. So people plugged

the ballads. So there were guys going around selling the ballads and they would sing them to the

audience on the street going to drum up interest but they would not sing the last verse. So you did

know how it ended. So there was a thing where it goes grey on the website. That's an amazing

execution ballad. How often was it? And he pulled his head out just in time.

Well, it is a bit like the internet today isn't it? So they had these sheets that you could

buy the sheet music if you wanted to and then you could share it on the streets by singing it.

...