ABSTRACT
Historians have shown that the literacy of ordinary eighteenth-century people usually consisted in the ability to read and did not necessarily involve any writing skill. Keith Thomas suggests that people of the lower classes might have known how to read particular printed scripts but have been unable to decipher handwritten material. Much of the impetus towards creating a Welsh-language ballad trade lay with the printers. In England, ballad writers are said to have become 'increasingly anonymous' during the early modern period, with most texts going out 'into the world authorless'. The periodical press continued to provide a source for Welsh ballad writers to the end of the eighteenth century. Furthermore, since learning to read was closely associated with the efforts of religious societies, literacy colours the moral landscape of Welsh balladry itself, setting the studiousness and reflection of reading against the waywardness.
