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  

Showing 21 to 40 of 94

28 A most excellent Song of the love of young Palmus, and faire Sheldra, with their unfortunate love [Pepys 1.350-51]
29 A Lamentable ballad of the tragical end of a Gallant Lord,/ and a Vertuous Lady [Euing 197]
31 The SUCCESS of/ Two English Travellers;/ Newly Arrived in London [Pepys 2.232]
32 The Seamans Song of Captain Ward the famous Pyrate of the world, and an/ English man born [Euing 327]
34 The Brides Buriall [Roxburghe 1.59]
35 The Judgement of God shewed upon one John Faustus/ Doctor in Divinity [Euing 145]
36 A Courtly new ballad of the Princely wooing of the/ fair Maid of London by King Edward [Euing 51]
37 The lamentable Ditty of Little Mousgrove,/ and the Lady Barnet [Pepys 1.364-65]
38 A worthy example of a vertuous wife, who fed her father with her own milk [Roxburghe 3.48-49]
39 An Hundred Godly Lessons,/ That a Mother on her Death-Bed gave to her Children [Pepys 2.16-17]
40 A Pleasant new Ballad betweene King Edward the fourth, and a Tan-/ner of Tamworth [Roxburghe 1.176-77]
41 The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore, a Goldsmiths Wife/ in London, sometime King Edward the Fourth's Concubine [Euing 394]
43 Save a Theefe from the Gallowes and hee'l hang thee if he can [Manchester Central Library Blackletter Ballads 1.56]
45 A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield, in Sherwood and of King Henry the second [Roxburghe 1.228-29]
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]
48 A pretty Ballad of the Lord of Lorn, and the false Steward [Pepys 1.494-95]
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)]
51 The Loyal English Man's WISH/ For the Preservation of/ The King and Queen [Pepys 5.63]

Top Fives

Click any item to filter the ballad list.
Use the search function to find additional material.

Authors

Publishers

Topics

Instruments

Performers

Tunes

Woodcuts

Holding Libraries