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.

Recreation - Good Fellowship  

Showing 1 to 7 of 7

26 The Whig Rampant:/OR, EXALTATION [Euing 389]
30 The Delights of the Bottle;/ OR,/ The Town-Gallants Declaration for Women and Wine [Euing 71]
56 A CARROUSE/ TO THE/ Emperour, the Royal Pole,/ And the much-wrong'd DUKE of LORRAIN [Roxburghe 4.2]
65 A pleasant new Ballad to sing both Even and Morne,/ Of the bloody murther of Sir John Barley-corne [Pepys 1.426-27]
87 New Mad Tom of Bedlam / OR,/ The Man in the Moon drinks Clarret [Pepys 1.502-03]
102 Robin Hood newly reviv'd [Bodleian Wood 401 (27v-28r)]
104 The Careless Gallant: Or, A farewel to Sorrow [Pepys 4.241]

Top Fives

Click any item to filter the ballad list.
Use the search function to find additional material.

Authors

Publishers

Topics

Instruments

Performers

Tunes

Woodcuts

Holding Libraries