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.

Fiddle   Curtal   Beinecke Library, Yale University  

Showing 1 to 12 of 12

13 The rarest Ballad that ever was seen,/ Of the Blind beggers daughter of Bednall-green [Euing 293]
23 The Countrey FARMER:/ OR, THE/ Buxome VIRGIN [Roxburghe 2.77]
24 An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of/ Susanna [Bodleian Douce 1 (30a)]
28 A most excellent Song of the love of young Palmus, and faire Sheldra, with their unfortunate love [Pepys 1.350-51]
44 The Lamentation of Master Pages wife of Plimmouth, who being enforced by her Parents to wed him against/ her will, did most wickedly consent to his murther [Pepys 1.126-27]
63 A most godly and comfortable Ballad of the glorious/ Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ [Roxburghe 1.258-59]
65 A pleasant new Ballad to sing both Even and Morne,/ Of the bloody murther of Sir John Barley-corne [Pepys 1.426-27]
66 Advice to the Ladies of/ LONDON, In the Choice of their Husbands [Pepys 4.85]
81 Prides fall: Or, A warning for all English Women./ By the Example of a strange Monster born of late in Germany [Euing 269]
83 The dying tears of a true Lover forsaken,/ Made on his Death=bed [Euing 64]
97 A Turn-Coat of the Times [Pepys 2.210]
106 A Strange Banquet;/ OR,/ The Devils Entertainment by Cook Laurel [Pepys 4.284]

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