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.

Watts, Andy   Kirkpatrick, John  

Showing 1 to 20 of 43

1 A proper new Ballad, intituled, The wandring Prince of Troy [Pepys 1.84-85]
3 The Catholick Ballad:/ OR AN/ INVITATION/ TO/ POPERY [Euing 24]
6 A most sweet Song of an English Merchant,/ borne at Chichester [Roxburghe 1.104-05]
7 THE/ Sale of Esau's Birth-right;/ OR,/ The New Buckingham Ballad [Crawford 3537]
8 A NEW SONG [Pepys 4.312]
11 THE/ Rare Vertue of an Orange;/ Or, Popery purged and expelled out of the Nation [Pepys 2.259]
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]
24 An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of/ Susanna [Bodleian Douce 1 (30a)]
26 The Whig Rampant:/OR, EXALTATION [Euing 389]
27 A Pleasant Song of the Valiant Deeds of Chivalry,/ Atchieved by that Noble Knight Sir Guy of Warwick [Roxburghe 3.50-1]
29 A Lamentable ballad of the tragical end of a Gallant Lord,/ and a Vertuous Lady [Euing 197]
30 The Delights of the Bottle;/ OR,/ The Town-Gallants Declaration for Women and Wine [Euing 71]
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]
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]
45 A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield, in Sherwood and of King Henry the second [Roxburghe 1.228-29]
48 A pretty Ballad of the Lord of Lorn, and the false Steward [Pepys 1.494-95]
50 A New Song of Lulla By,/ OR, Father Peter's Policy Discovered [Bodleian Wood E25 (110)]
52 England New Bell-man:/ Ringing into all peoples ears Gods dreadful/ Judgements against this Land and Kingdom [Bodleian Wood 401 (159v-160r)]

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