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.

Fortune My Foe   Bodleian Library, Oxford University  

Showing 1 to 5 of 5

15 The Lamentable and Tragicall History of Titus An-/dronicus [Folger L252a]
35 The Judgement of God shewed upon one John Faustus/ Doctor in Divinity [Euing 145]
43 Save a Theefe from the Gallowes and hee'l hang thee if he can [Manchester Central Library Blackletter Ballads 1.56]
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]
88 An excellent song, wherein you shall find,/ Great consolation for a troubled mind [Pepys 2.63]