• Ballads
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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.

Drum   Double Bass   Watts, Andy   Vitale, Steno  

Showing 1 to 8 of 8

15 The Lamentable and Tragicall History of Titus An-/dronicus [Folger L252a]
27 A Pleasant Song of the Valiant Deeds of Chivalry,/ Atchieved by that Noble Knight Sir Guy of Warwick [Roxburghe 3.50-1]
63 A most godly and comfortable Ballad of the glorious/ Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ [Roxburghe 1.258-59]
77 The wonderfull example of God shewed upon Jasper Coningham. a Gentleman borne in/ Scotland [Crawford 714]
93 Ragged, and Torne, and True./ Or, the poore mans Resoltion [Roxburghe 1.352-53]
102 Robin Hood newly reviv'd [Bodleian Wood 401 (27v-28r)]
106 A Strange Banquet;/ OR,/ The Devils Entertainment by Cook Laurel [Pepys 4.284]
110 The doleful Dance, and Song of Death; Intituled, Dance after my Pipe [Pepys 2.62]

Top Fives

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Authors

  • Anonymous  (5)
  • Hill, Thomas  (1)
  • Jonson, Ben (1573-1637)  (1)
  • Lloyd, Richard  (1)

Publishers

  • Clark, John  (7)
  • Passinger, Thomas  (7)
  • Thackeray, William  (7)
  • Coles (aka Coules), Fra...  (6)
  • Gilbertson, William  (6)

Topics

  • Places - English  (5)
  • Bodies - injury  (4)
  • Environment - landscape  (4)
  • Gender - femininity  (4)
  • Gender - masculinity  (4)

Instruments

  •   Drum  (7)
  • Fiddle  (7)
  • Cittern  (4)
  •   Double bass  (2)
  • Curtal  (1)

Performers

  • Lewin, Giles  (8)
  •   Watts, Andy  (6)
  • Banks, Steve  (5)
  •   Vitale, Steno  (5)
  • Davis, Jub  (3)

Tunes

  • Cook Laurel  (1)
  • Fortune my foe  (1)
  • Guy of Warwick  (1)
  • Lord Willoughby  (1)
  • Old Simon the King  (1)

Woodcuts

  • Christ's Resurrection  (1)
  • Countryman with staff  (1)
  • Couple in cave  (1)
  • Mad-man with horn and s...  (1)
  • Scholar with scroll  (1)

Holding Libraries

  • British Library  (8)
  • Pepys Library, Magdalen...  (7)
  • Bodleian Library, Oxfor...  (6)
  • No known copy  (6)
  • National Library of Sco...  (5)

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