Top pop from seventeenth-century England. Broadside ballads were single-sheet songs that sold for a penny a piece. This website concentrates on over 100 resoundingly successful examples that you can investigate through recordings, images and a wealth of other materials. Whether you are interested in music, art, love, gender, tragedy, politics, family life, crime, history, humour or death, you will find something to engage you here. See also User’s Guide.

Anonymous   Houghton Library, Harvard University  

Showing 1 to 20 of 36

4 A lamentable Dittie composed upon the death of/ Robert Lord Devereux late Earle of Essex, who was beheaded in the/ Tower of London, upon Ashwednesday in the morning [Huntington Britwell 18290]
7 THE/ Sale of Esau's Birth-right;/ OR,/ The New Buckingham Ballad [Crawford 3537]
9 A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall [Roxburghe 3.148-49]
11 THE/ Rare Vertue of an Orange;/ Or, Popery purged and expelled out of the Nation [Pepys 2.259]
16 The Lamenting Ladies last farewel to the/ WORLD [Euing 183]
23 The Countrey FARMER:/ OR, THE/ Buxome VIRGIN [Roxburghe 2.77]
26 The Whig Rampant:/OR, EXALTATION [Euing 389]
28 A most excellent Song of the love of young Palmus, and faire Sheldra, with their unfortunate love [Pepys 1.350-51]
35 The Judgement of God shewed upon one John Faustus/ Doctor in Divinity [Euing 145]
46 A lamentable Ballad of a Combat lately performed neere London,/ betwixt Sir James Steward, and Sir George Wharton  [Euing 195]
47 THE/ Lord RUSSELS/ Last Farewel to the World [Huntington HEH 18016]
49 A constant Wife, a kinde Wife,/ A loving Wife, and a fine Wife [Pepys 1.390-91]
50 A New Song of Lulla By,/ OR, Father Peter's Policy Discovered [Bodleian Wood E25 (110)]
52 England New Bell-man:/ Ringing into all peoples ears Gods dreadful/ Judgements against this Land and Kingdom [Bodleian Wood 401 (159v-160r)]
53 The Dead Mans Song,/ Whose dwelling was neere unto Bassings Hall in London [Roxburghe 1.72-73]
60 A new Sonnet, shewing how the Goddesse Diana transformed Acteon into the/ shape of an Hart [Manchester Central Library Blackletter Ballads 1.29]
64 A PATTERN of true LOVE to you I will recite,/ Between a Beautiful Lady and a Courtious Knight [Roxburghe 2.579]
68 Poor Robin's Dream, commonly call'd, Poor Charity [Euing 285]
70 The wofull complaint, and lamentable death of a forsaken Lover [Pepys 1.354-55]
74 Ann Askew, intituled, I am a Woman Poor and Blind [Pepys 2.24-25]

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