Two homeless orphans (a girl and a young woman) singing ballads to a family. Engraving by J. Romney after W. Gill.

Described in a poem by L.E. Landon, in Fisher's Drawing room scrap book, op. cit. pp. 13-15: "The orphan ballad singers, the music by Henry Russell, by whom, with permission, this ballad is most respectfully dedicated to Mrs Edward Lytton Bulwer. Oh, weary, weary are our feet, / And weary, weary is our way; / Thro' many a long and crowded street / We've wandered mournfully to-day. / My little sister she is pale / She is too tender and too young / To bear the autumn's sullen gale, / And all day long the child has sung. / She was our mother's favourite child, / Who loved her for her eyes of blue, / And she is delicate and mild, / She cannot do what I can do. / She never met her father's eyes, / Although they were so like her own; / In some far distant sea he lies, / A father to his child unknown. / The first time that she lisped his name, / A little playful thing was she ; / How proud we were,- yet that night came / The tale how he had sunk at sea. / My mother never raised her head ; / How strange, how white, how cold she grew! / It was a broken heart they said / I wish our hearts were broken too. / We have no home—we have no friends, / They said our home no more was ours; / Our cottage where the ash-tree bends, / The garden we had filled with flowers. / The sounding shells our father brought, / That we might hear the sea at home; / Our bees, that in the summer wrought / The winter's golden honeycomb. / We wandered forth mid wind and rain, / No shelter from the open sky; / I only wish to see again / My mother's grave, and rest and die. Alas, it is a weary thing / To sing our ballads o'er and o'er ; The songs we used at home to sing / --Alas, we have a home no more!"

The encounter occurs outside a house which seems to be the courtyard of a farm house, entered through an open door. The family is a mother with three children and a dog. The mother is seated on a bench. The two ballad singers hold ballad sheets

London : Fisher, Son & Co., 1834.

1 print : engraving ; platemark 16.5 x 21.7 cm

The orphan ballad singers. Painted by W. Gill Esq. Engraved by J. Romney.

Wellcome Collection 27717i