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.

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25 A most notable example of an ungracious Son, who/ in the pride of his heart denyed his own Father [Roxburghe 1.226-27]
65 A pleasant new Ballad to sing both Even and Morne,/ Of the bloody murther of Sir John Barley-corne [Pepys 1.426-27]
91 A pleasant new Song, betwixt/ The Saylor and his Love [Pepys 1.422-23]

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