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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.

Bodies - Looks/physique   Watts, Andy  

Showing 1 to 11 of 11

6 A most sweet Song of an English Merchant,/ borne at Chichester [Roxburghe 1.104-05]
24 An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of/ Susanna [Bodleian Douce 1 (30a)]
29 A Lamentable ballad of the tragical end of a Gallant Lord,/ and a Vertuous Lady [Euing 197]
45 A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield, in Sherwood and of King Henry the second [Roxburghe 1.228-29]
61 The Wandring Jew,/ OR, The Shoo-maker of Jerusalem [Pepys 1.524-25]
63 A most godly and comfortable Ballad of the glorious/ Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ [Roxburghe 1.258-59]
69 Ile never Love thee more/ being a true Love Song between a young/ Man and a Maid [Pepys 3.266]
83 The dying tears of a true Lover forsaken,/ Made on his Death=bed [Euing 64]
93 Ragged, and Torne, and True./ Or, the poore mans Resoltion [Roxburghe 1.352-53]
99 A Monstrous shape./ OR/ A shapelesse Monster [Bodleian Wood 401 (135v-136r)]
120 The Happy Husbandman:/ OR,/ Country Innocence [Pepys 3.45]

Top Fives

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Authors

  • Anonymous  (9)
  • Deloney, Thomas (d. in...  (1)
  • Price, Laurence (fl. 16...  (1)

Publishers

  • Clark, John  (8)
  • Coles (aka Coules), Fra...  (8)
  • Vere, Thomas  (8)
  • Wright, John III  (8)
  • Passinger, Thomas  (7)

Topics

  •   Bodies - looks/physique  (11)
  • Gender - femininity  (8)
  • Gender - masculinity  (6)
  • Environment - animals  (5)
  • Gender - courtship  (5)

Instruments

  • Cittern  (8)
  • Fiddle  (6)
  • Curtal  (3)
  • Drum  (2)
  • Recorder  (2)

Performers

  •   Watts, Andy  (11)
  • Lewin, Giles  (10)
  • Vitale, Steno  (8)
  • Banks, Steve  (3)
  • Davis, Jub  (3)

Tunes

  • In peascod time  (2)
  • Come live with me and b...  (1)
  • I'll never love thee mo...  (1)
  • King Solomon  (1)
  • My young Mary  (1)

Woodcuts

  • Barefoot giant  (1)
  • Christ's Resurrection  (1)
  • Countryman with staff  (1)
  • Declaiming man  (1)
  • Mad-man with horn and s...  (1)

Holding Libraries

  • British Library  (9)
  • No known copy  (9)
  • Pepys Library, Magdalen...  (9)
  • Bodleian Library, Oxfor...  (8)
  • National Library of Sco...  (8)

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