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.

Society - Old/young   Politics - Civil War/interregnum  

Showing 1 to 20 of 20

5 The Ballad of the CLOAK:/ Or, The Cloaks Knavery [Pepys 2.218]
13 The rarest Ballad that ever was seen,/ Of the Blind beggers daughter of Bednall-green [Euing 293]
16 The Lamenting Ladies last farewel to the/ WORLD [Euing 183]
19 A Pleasant Ballad of Tobias, wherein is shewed/ what wonderful things chanced to him in his Youth [Euing 270]
26 The Whig Rampant:/OR, EXALTATION [Euing 389]
39 An Hundred Godly Lessons,/ That a Mother on her Death-Bed gave to her Children [Pepys 2.16-17]
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]
49 A constant Wife, a kinde Wife,/ A loving Wife, and a fine Wife [Pepys 1.390-91]
68 Poor Robin's Dream, commonly call'd, Poor Charity [Euing 285]
79 Win at first, lose at last; or, a New Game at Cards [Bodleian Wood 401 (149v-150r)]
86 A most excellent Ballad, of an old man and his wife, who in great want and misery sought to/ Children for succour, by whom they were disdained [Pepys 1.43]
92 An Excellent Ballad of the Mercers son of Midhurst, and/ the Clothiers daughter of Guilford [Euing 91 and 12]
97 A Turn-Coat of the Times [Pepys 2.210]
102 Robin Hood newly reviv'd [Bodleian Wood 401 (27v-28r)]
108 The Wandring Jews Chronicle [Pepys 1.482-83]
110 The doleful Dance, and Song of Death; Intituled, Dance after my Pipe [Pepys 2.62]
111 The Famous Fight at Malago,/ Or, The Englishmen's Victory over the Spaniards [Pepys 4.204]
112 Rebellion given over House-keeping:/ OR,/ A General Sale of Rebellious Houshould stuff [Pepys 2.209]
113 A New little Northren Song called,/ Under and over, over and under [Pepys 1.264-65]

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