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.

Emotions - Anger   Vitale, Steno   Watts, Andy  

Showing 1 to 16 of 16

1 A proper new Ballad, intituled, The wandring Prince of Troy [Pepys 1.84-85]
14 A Godly Warning for all Maidens, by the exam/ple of Gods Judgement shewed on one Jermans Wife of Clifton [Pepys 1.504-05]
15 The Lamentable and Tragicall History of Titus An-/dronicus [Folger L252a]
23 The Countrey FARMER:/ OR, THE/ Buxome VIRGIN [Roxburghe 2.77]
34 The Brides Buriall [Roxburghe 1.59]
41 The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore, a Goldsmiths Wife/ in London, sometime King Edward the Fourth's Concubine [Euing 394]
49 A constant Wife, a kinde Wife,/ A loving Wife, and a fine Wife [Pepys 1.390-91]
57 The Shepherd and the King, and of Gillian the Shepherds Wife, with her churlish Answer [Euing 332]
60 A new Sonnet, shewing how the Goddesse Diana transformed Acteon into the/ shape of an Hart [Manchester Central Library Blackletter Ballads 1.29]
61 The Wandring Jew,/ OR, The Shoo-maker of Jerusalem [Pepys 1.524-25]
79 Win at first, lose at last; or, a New Game at Cards [Bodleian Wood 401 (149v-150r)]
83 The dying tears of a true Lover forsaken,/ Made on his Death=bed [Euing 64]
85 A new Ballad, intituled, The stout Cripple of Cornwal [Euing 242]
90 Cupids Courtesie:/ OR,/ The young Gallant foild at his own Weapon [Euing 39]
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]
107 A good Wife, or none [Roxburghe 1.140-41]

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