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.

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Showing 1 to 20 of 26

2 A Memorable Song on the unhappy hunting in Chevy-Chase, between Earl/ Piercy of England, and Earl Dowglas of Scotland [Roxburghe 3.66-67]
7 THE/ Sale of Esau's Birth-right;/ OR,/ The New Buckingham Ballad [Crawford 3537]
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]
28 A most excellent Song of the love of young Palmus, and faire Sheldra, with their unfortunate love [Pepys 1.350-51]
32 The Seamans Song of Captain Ward the famous Pyrate of the world, and an/ English man born [Euing 327]
40 A Pleasant new Ballad betweene King Edward the fourth, and a Tan-/ner of Tamworth [Roxburghe 1.176-77]
43 Save a Theefe from the Gallowes and hee'l hang thee if he can [Manchester Central Library Blackletter Ballads 1.56]
45 A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield, in Sherwood and of King Henry the second [Roxburghe 1.228-29]
46 A lamentable Ballad of a Combat lately performed neere London,/ betwixt Sir James Steward, and Sir George Wharton  [Euing 195]
54 An Excellent Ballad of George Barnwel an Apprentice in Lon-/don, who was undone by a Strumpet [Pepys 2.158-59]
57 The Shepherd and the King, and of Gillian the Shepherds Wife, with her churlish Answer [Euing 332]
62 The Honour of a London Prentice [Pepys 3.252]
73 The lamentable fall of Queen Elenor, who for her Pride/ and wickedness by Gods judgements sunk into the ground at Charing=Cross and rose at/ Queen hive [Euing 184]
78 John ARMSTRONG's Last Good-Night [Pepys 2.133]
85 A new Ballad, intituled, The stout Cripple of Cornwal [Euing 242]
92 An Excellent Ballad of the Mercers son of Midhurst, and/ the Clothiers daughter of Guilford [Euing 91 and 12]

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