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.

Humour - Extreme Situations/surprises  

Showing 1 to 10 of 10

45 A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield, in Sherwood and of King Henry the second [Roxburghe 1.228-29]
50 A New Song of Lulla By,/ OR, Father Peter's Policy Discovered [Bodleian Wood E25 (110)]
57 The Shepherd and the King, and of Gillian the Shepherds Wife, with her churlish Answer [Euing 332]
85 A new Ballad, intituled, The stout Cripple of Cornwal [Euing 242]
87 New Mad Tom of Bedlam / OR,/ The Man in the Moon drinks Clarret [Pepys 1.502-03]
99 A Monstrous shape./ OR/ A shapelesse Monster [Bodleian Wood 401 (135v-136r)]
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]
112 Rebellion given over House-keeping:/ OR,/ A General Sale of Rebellious Houshould stuff [Pepys 2.209]
114 The Woman to the PLOW;/ And the Man to the HEN-ROOST [Euing 397]

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