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.

Cittern   Bodleian Library, Oxford University  

Showing 1 to 20 of 40

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]
6 A most sweet Song of an English Merchant,/ borne at Chichester [Roxburghe 1.104-05]
10 The Norfolke Gentleman his last Will and Testament [Roxburghe 1.284-85]
11 THE/ Rare Vertue of an Orange;/ Or, Popery purged and expelled out of the Nation [Pepys 2.259]
13 The rarest Ballad that ever was seen,/ Of the Blind beggers daughter of Bednall-green [Euing 293]
15 The Lamentable and Tragicall History of Titus An-/dronicus [Folger L252a]
16 The Lamenting Ladies last farewel to the/ WORLD [Euing 183]
18 An excellent Ballad of a Prince of England's Courtship to the/ King of France’s Daughter, and how the Prince was disasterously slain [Roxburghe 1.102-03]
22 The Spanish Ladies Love [Euing 340]
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]
34 The Brides Buriall [Roxburghe 1.59]
41 The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore, a Goldsmiths Wife/ in London, sometime King Edward the Fourth's Concubine [Euing 394]
45 A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield, in Sherwood and of King Henry the second [Roxburghe 1.228-29]
50 A New Song of Lulla By,/ OR, Father Peter's Policy Discovered [Bodleian Wood E25 (110)]
53 The Dead Mans Song,/ Whose dwelling was neere unto Bassings Hall in London [Roxburghe 1.72-73]
54 An Excellent Ballad of George Barnwel an Apprentice in Lon-/don, who was undone by a Strumpet [Pepys 2.158-59]
61 The Wandring Jew,/ OR, The Shoo-maker of Jerusalem [Pepys 1.524-25]

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