ABSTRACT
Costermonger's cultural activity flourished in the pub, which was so markedly working class as to be unavailable as an arena for hegemonic negotiation. A breakdown in hegemony inevitably resulted in its replacement by coercion: it would have required considerable daring, for example, to sing 'The Wearing of the Green' in England while the Fenian struggle raged, though whether it was an actual criminal offence or not has now been debated. Bourgeois song was also consciously employed as a medium of persuasion by various fractional interests within the hegemonic bloc. The reaction of the bourgeoisie to these ballads was one of outrage: 'Some of these songs are indecent; almost all of them have a morbid sympathy with criminals. Bourgeois music was part of the dominant culture, which in the nineteenth century gave it an exclusive claim to the label 'culture'. Bourgeois song was also consciously employed as a medium of persuasion by various fractional interests within the hegemonic bloc.
