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.

Morality - Romantic/sexual   Cittern   Fiddle  

Showing 1 to 12 of 12

22 The Spanish Ladies Love [Euing 340]
24 An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of/ Susanna [Bodleian Douce 1 (30a)]
41 The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore, a Goldsmiths Wife/ in London, sometime King Edward the Fourth's Concubine [Euing 394]
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]
54 An Excellent Ballad of George Barnwel an Apprentice in Lon-/don, who was undone by a Strumpet [Pepys 2.158-59]
66 Advice to the Ladies of/ LONDON, In the Choice of their Husbands [Pepys 4.85]
83 The dying tears of a true Lover forsaken,/ Made on his Death=bed [Euing 64]
95 A new Ballad of the Souldier and Peggy [Roxburghe 1.370-71]
98 The Nightingales Song; Or The Souldiers rare Musick,/ and Maids Recreation [Pepys 4.41]
107 A good Wife, or none [Roxburghe 1.140-41]
113 A New little Northren Song called,/ Under and over, over and under [Pepys 1.264-65]
116 Love and Honour: Or,/ The Lovers Farewel to Calista [Roxburghe 2.306]

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