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.

Gender - Femininity   Watts, Andy   Ellis, Vivien  

Showing 1 to 18 of 18

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]
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]
15 The Lamentable and Tragicall History of Titus An-/dronicus [Folger L252a]
20 A sweet Sonnet, wherein the Lover exclaimeth against/ Fortune for the loss of his Ladies favour [Pepys 1.512-13]
22 The Spanish Ladies Love [Euing 340]
24 An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of/ Susanna [Bodleian Douce 1 (30a)]
27 A Pleasant Song of the Valiant Deeds of Chivalry,/ Atchieved by that Noble Knight Sir Guy of Warwick [Roxburghe 3.50-1]
28 A most excellent Song of the love of young Palmus, and faire Sheldra, with their unfortunate love [Pepys 1.350-51]
29 A Lamentable ballad of the tragical end of a Gallant Lord,/ and a Vertuous Lady [Euing 197]
39 An Hundred Godly Lessons,/ That a Mother on her Death-Bed gave to her Children [Pepys 2.16-17]
57 The Shepherd and the King, and of Gillian the Shepherds Wife, with her churlish Answer [Euing 332]
63 A most godly and comfortable Ballad of the glorious/ Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ [Roxburghe 1.258-59]
69 Ile never Love thee more/ being a true Love Song between a young/ Man and a Maid [Pepys 3.266]
83 The dying tears of a true Lover forsaken,/ Made on his Death=bed [Euing 64]
99 A Monstrous shape./ OR/ A shapelesse Monster [Bodleian Wood 401 (135v-136r)]
120 The Happy Husbandman:/ OR,/ Country Innocence [Pepys 3.45]