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   Morality - Romantic/sexual  

Showing 1 to 20 of 50

1 A proper new Ballad, intituled, The wandring Prince of Troy [Pepys 1.84-85]
6 A most sweet Song of an English Merchant,/ borne at Chichester [Roxburghe 1.104-05]
9 A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall [Roxburghe 3.148-49]
10 The Norfolke Gentleman his last Will and Testament [Roxburghe 1.284-85]
13 The rarest Ballad that ever was seen,/ Of the Blind beggers daughter of Bednall-green [Euing 293]
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]
17 The Merchants Daughter of Bristow [Euing 210]
21 A True Relation of the Life and Death of/ Sir Andrew Barton, a Pyrate and Rover on the Seas [Pepys 1.484-85]
22 The Spanish Ladies Love [Euing 340]
23 The Countrey FARMER:/ OR, THE/ Buxome VIRGIN [Roxburghe 2.77]
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]
34 The Brides Buriall [Roxburghe 1.59]
36 A Courtly new ballad of the Princely wooing of the/ fair Maid of London by King Edward [Euing 51]
37 The lamentable Ditty of Little Mousgrove,/ and the Lady Barnet [Pepys 1.364-65]
41 The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore, a Goldsmiths Wife/ in London, sometime King Edward the Fourth's Concubine [Euing 394]
42 An Excellent Ballad of Patient Grissel [Euing 85]
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]

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