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.

Huntington Library  

Showing 1 to 15 of 15

2 A Memorable Song on the unhappy hunting in Chevy-Chase, between Earl/ Piercy of England, and Earl Dowglas of Scotland [Roxburghe 3.66-67]
3 The Catholick Ballad:/ OR AN/ INVITATION/ TO/ POPERY [Euing 24]
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]
11 THE/ Rare Vertue of an Orange;/ Or, Popery purged and expelled out of the Nation [Pepys 2.259]
25 A most notable example of an ungracious Son, who/ in the pride of his heart denyed his own Father [Roxburghe 1.226-27]
26 The Whig Rampant:/OR, EXALTATION [Euing 389]
45 A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield, in Sherwood and of King Henry the second [Roxburghe 1.228-29]
47 THE/ Lord RUSSELS/ Last Farewel to the World [Huntington HEH 18016]
71 The Scotch Lasses Constancy/ OR/ Jenny's Lamentation for the loss of Jockey [Crawford 1217]
73 The lamentable fall of Queen Elenor, who for her Pride/ and wickedness by Gods judgements sunk into the ground at Charing=Cross and rose at/ Queen hive [Euing 184]
86 A most excellent Ballad, of an old man and his wife, who in great want and misery sought to/ Children for succour, by whom they were disdained [Pepys 1.43]
100 Luke Huttons Lamentation: which he wrote the day before his death, being/ condemned to be hanged at Yorke for his robberies and trespasses committed/ there-about [Euing 189]
112 Rebellion given over House-keeping:/ OR,/ A General Sale of Rebellious Houshould stuff [Pepys 2.209]
118 BELGICK-BOAR [Crawford 429]

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