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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.

Clark, John   Fortune My Foe  

Showing 1 to 6 of 6

15 The Lamentable and Tragicall History of Titus An-/dronicus [Folger L252a]
20 A sweet Sonnet, wherein the Lover exclaimeth against/ Fortune for the loss of his Ladies favour [Pepys 1.512-13]
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]
101 Saint Bernards Vision./ OR,/ A briefe Discourse (Dialogue-wise) betweene the Soule and the Body of a dam/ned man newly deceased [Roxburghe 1.376-77]

Top Fives

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Authors

  • Anonymous  (5)
  • Deloney, Thomas (d. in...  (1)

Publishers

  •   Clark, John  (6)
  • Coles (aka Coules), Fra...  (6)
  • Passinger, Thomas  (6)
  • Thackeray, William  (6)
  • Vere, Thomas  (6)

Topics

  • Emotions - despair  (5)
  • Religion - Christ/God  (4)
  • Religion - sin/repentan...  (4)
  • Crime - murder  (3)
  • Death - unlawful killin...  (3)

Instruments

  • Fiddle  (2)
  • Cittern  (1)
  • Drum  (1)

Performers

  • Ellis, Vivien  (3)
  • Lewin, Giles  (3)
  • Banks, Steve  (2)
  • Davis, Jub  (2)
  • Kirkpatrick, John  (2)

Tunes

  •   Fortune my foe  (6)

Woodcuts

  • Countryman with staff  (1)
  • Courtroom with hat on f...  (1)
  • Naked man awakening  (1)
  • Old man on scaffold  (1)
  • Scholar with scroll  (1)

Holding Libraries

  • British Library  (6)
  • No known copy  (6)
  • Pepys Library, Magdalen...  (6)
  • Bodleian Library, Oxfor...  (4)
  • National Library of Sco...  (4)

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