In 1904 Henry Marvin Belden, already a knowledgeable ballad/folksong scholar though yet to cap a distinguished career with his erudite annotations to the exemplary field collections from Missouri and North Carolina, published a short article in Modern Philology titled "The Ballad of Lord Bakeman." (1) It began:

There has come into my hands recently (through the kindness of Mr W. S. Johnson, of Tuscumbia, Mo.) a humble but very interesting little volume of British and American ballads. The first fifty pages and an unknown number at the end are lost, as well as title page and cover, so that the title and the date and place of publication can be only conjectured. The pages (2 3/4 by 4 1/2 inches in size) have the running head Popular Songs, which was no doubt the title. The date is some time after 1835, for one of the pieces contains that date. ...That it is an American compilation is abundantly proved by the contents....It has evidently seen hard service in the state of Missouri, where it has been for at least a generation, and perhaps ever since it was printed. I should be very glad if anyone could supply the title-page of the book. The Congressional Library was unable to identify it. (2) The contents are for the most part of the broadside or what [Francis James] Child calls the "vulgar ballad" character, quite innocent of literary touch, with the exception of two or three pieces. One of these is Holmes's "Ballad of the Oysterman," which seems to have acquired an early and genuine popularity, being printed here within a few years after its composition, and with variations that point conclusively to oral transmission. For the rest, the range of subject and of age is considerable, but there is hardly any range of tone. From "Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor" to "Fannie Blair," from "The Men of Kent" and "The London 'Prentice" to "The New York Trader" and "The Female Sailor," all are thoroughly of the people and for the people. Among them is a version of "Young Beichan" differing in some respects from any of the versions given by Child. (3)

Belden continued with a discussion of the versions of "Young Beichan" or "Lord Bateman" that Child included in his path-breaking opus magnum, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, other broadside versions, and the way in which the text under discussion related to both.

To my knowledge, Belden thus became the first scholar in print whose attention was drawn to the cheaply printed, though widely popular, Forget-Me-Not Songster (FMNS). Widely popular a half century earlier, I should add; note that without a title page Belden found no one in ca. 1904--either in Missouri or at the Library of Congress--who could identify the volume in its mutilated condition. (4) Cheaply printed "songsters," mostly pocket-sized and soft-covered, were collections of the texts of popular songs of the day. Many were sold by performers; others were distributed by manufacturers as effective advertisements of their wares....