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.

Humour - Mockery   National Library Of Scotland  

Showing 1 to 7 of 7

3 The Catholick Ballad:/ OR AN/ INVITATION/ TO/ POPERY [Euing 24]
7 THE/ Sale of Esau's Birth-right;/ OR,/ The New Buckingham Ballad [Crawford 3537]
8 A NEW SONG [Pepys 4.312]
45 A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield, in Sherwood and of King Henry the second [Roxburghe 1.228-29]
57 The Shepherd and the King, and of Gillian the Shepherds Wife, with her churlish Answer [Euing 332]
89 Private Occurrences,/ OR,/ The Transactions of the four Last Years [Pepys 4.317v]
117 The Protestant Court of England:/ OR, THE/ Joyful Coronation of K. William III. and Q. Mary II [Pepys 2.275]

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