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 - Clothing  

Showing 1 to 20 of 38

4 A lamentable Dittie composed upon the death of/ Robert Lord Devereux late Earle of Essex, who was beheaded in the/ Tower of London, upon Ashwednesday in the morning [Huntington Britwell 18290]
5 The Ballad of the CLOAK:/ Or, The Cloaks Knavery [Pepys 2.218]
6 A most sweet Song of an English Merchant,/ borne at Chichester [Roxburghe 1.104-05]
13 The rarest Ballad that ever was seen,/ Of the Blind beggers daughter of Bednall-green [Euing 293]
16 The Lamenting Ladies last farewel to the/ WORLD [Euing 183]
17 The Merchants Daughter of Bristow [Euing 210]
18 An excellent Ballad of a Prince of England's Courtship to the/ King of France’s Daughter, and how the Prince was disasterously slain [Roxburghe 1.102-03]
22 The Spanish Ladies Love [Euing 340]
25 A most notable example of an ungracious Son, who/ in the pride of his heart denyed his own Father [Roxburghe 1.226-27]
27 A Pleasant Song of the Valiant Deeds of Chivalry,/ Atchieved by that Noble Knight Sir Guy of Warwick [Roxburghe 3.50-1]
34 The Brides Buriall [Roxburghe 1.59]
39 An Hundred Godly Lessons,/ That a Mother on her Death-Bed gave to her Children [Pepys 2.16-17]
40 A Pleasant new Ballad betweene King Edward the fourth, and a Tan-/ner of Tamworth [Roxburghe 1.176-77]
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]
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]
48 A pretty Ballad of the Lord of Lorn, and the false Steward [Pepys 1.494-95]
52 England New Bell-man:/ Ringing into all peoples ears Gods dreadful/ Judgements against this Land and Kingdom [Bodleian Wood 401 (159v-160r)]
54 An Excellent Ballad of George Barnwel an Apprentice in Lon-/don, who was undone by a Strumpet [Pepys 2.158-59]

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