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   Emotions - Despair  

Showing 1 to 20 of 35

1 A proper new Ballad, intituled, The wandring Prince of Troy [Pepys 1.84-85]
9 A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall [Roxburghe 3.148-49]
10 The Norfolke Gentleman his last Will and Testament [Roxburghe 1.284-85]
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]
17 The Merchants Daughter of Bristow [Euing 210]
20 A sweet Sonnet, wherein the Lover exclaimeth against/ Fortune for the loss of his Ladies favour [Pepys 1.512-13]
22 The Spanish Ladies Love [Euing 340]
24 An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of/ Susanna [Bodleian Douce 1 (30a)]
25 A most notable example of an ungracious Son, who/ in the pride of his heart denyed his own Father [Roxburghe 1.226-27]
28 A most excellent Song of the love of young Palmus, and faire Sheldra, with their unfortunate love [Pepys 1.350-51]
35 The Judgement of God shewed upon one John Faustus/ Doctor in Divinity [Euing 145]
36 A Courtly new ballad of the Princely wooing of the/ fair Maid of London by King Edward [Euing 51]
37 The lamentable Ditty of Little Mousgrove,/ and the Lady Barnet [Pepys 1.364-65]
38 A worthy example of a vertuous wife, who fed her father with her own milk [Roxburghe 3.48-49]
41 The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore, a Goldsmiths Wife/ in London, sometime King Edward the Fourth's Concubine [Euing 394]
42 An Excellent Ballad of Patient Grissel [Euing 85]
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]
54 An Excellent Ballad of George Barnwel an Apprentice in Lon-/don, who was undone by a Strumpet [Pepys 2.158-59]

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