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.

Clark, John   Gender - Courtship  

Showing 21 to 32 of 32

59 Flora's farewell: Or,/ The Shepherds Love-passion Song [Euing 121]
64 A PATTERN of true LOVE to you I will recite,/ Between a Beautiful Lady and a Courtious Knight [Roxburghe 2.579]
69 Ile never Love thee more/ being a true Love Song between a young/ Man and a Maid [Pepys 3.266]
70 The wofull complaint, and lamentable death of a forsaken Lover [Pepys 1.354-55]
82 The two Constant Lovers. Or,/ A patterne of true Love exprest in this loving Dialogue betweene Samuell and Sara [Euing 360]
83 The dying tears of a true Lover forsaken,/ Made on his Death=bed [Euing 64]
94 An Excellent Ditty, called the Shepherds wooing Dulcina [Roxburghe 2.402-03]
95 A new Ballad of the Souldier and Peggy [Roxburghe 1.370-71]
98 The Nightingales Song; Or The Souldiers rare Musick,/ and Maids Recreation [Pepys 4.41]
107 A good Wife, or none [Roxburghe 1.140-41]
110 The doleful Dance, and Song of Death; Intituled, Dance after my Pipe [Pepys 2.62]
119 A Voyage to Virginia;/ OR,/ The Valiant Soldiers Fare-well to his Love [Bodleian Douce 2 (236b)]

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