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.

Folger Shakespeare Library   William Andrews Clark Memorial Library  

Showing 1 to 13 of 13

3 The Catholick Ballad:/ OR AN/ INVITATION/ TO/ POPERY [Euing 24]
5 The Ballad of the CLOAK:/ Or, The Cloaks Knavery [Pepys 2.218]
7 THE/ Sale of Esau's Birth-right;/ OR,/ The New Buckingham Ballad [Crawford 3537]
8 A NEW SONG [Pepys 4.312]
11 THE/ Rare Vertue of an Orange;/ Or, Popery purged and expelled out of the Nation [Pepys 2.259]
15 The Lamentable and Tragicall History of Titus An-/dronicus [Folger L252a]
24 An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of/ Susanna [Bodleian Douce 1 (30a)]
26 The Whig Rampant:/OR, EXALTATION [Euing 389]
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)]
59 Flora's farewell: Or,/ The Shepherds Love-passion Song [Euing 121]
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