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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.

Vere, Thomas   Cittern   Ellis, Vivien  

Showing 1 to 8 of 8

10 The Norfolke Gentleman his last Will and Testament [Roxburghe 1.284-85]
15 The Lamentable and Tragicall History of Titus An-/dronicus [Folger L252a]
22 The Spanish Ladies Love [Euing 340]
24 An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of/ Susanna [Bodleian Douce 1 (30a)]
28 A most excellent Song of the love of young Palmus, and faire Sheldra, with their unfortunate love [Pepys 1.350-51]
39 An Hundred Godly Lessons,/ That a Mother on her Death-Bed gave to her Children [Pepys 2.16-17]
41 The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore, a Goldsmiths Wife/ in London, sometime King Edward the Fourth's Concubine [Euing 394]
103 A Friends advice:/ In an excellent Ditty, concerning the variable Changes in this World [Roxburghe 1.116-17]

Top Fives

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Authors

  • Anonymous  (7)
  • Campion, Thomas (1567–1...  (1)
  • Deloney, Thomas (d. in...  (1)

Publishers

  • Coles (aka Coules), Fra...  (8)
  • Gosson, Henry  (8)
  • Grismond, John  (8)
  • Pavier, Thomas  (8)
  •   Vere, Thomas  (8)

Topics

  • Bodies - looks/physique  (5)
  • Emotions - despair  (5)
  • Gender - femininity  (5)
  • Religion - Christ/God  (5)
  • Emotions - love  (4)

Instruments

  •   Cittern  (8)
  • Fiddle  (3)
  • Curtal  (1)
  • Drum  (1)

Performers

  •   Ellis, Vivien  (8)
  • Vitale, Steno  (8)
  • Lewin, Giles  (4)
  • Banks, Steve  (1)
  • Giles, Ian  (1)

Tunes

  • Come live with me and b...  (1)
  • Fortune my foe  (1)
  • King Solomon  (1)
  • Rogero  (1)
  • Shackley hay  (1)

Woodcuts

  • Countryman with staff  (1)
  • Couple with leafy fan  (1)
  • Couple with necklace  (1)
  • Mother on deathbed  (1)
  • Norfolk gentleman compo...  (1)

Holding Libraries

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

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