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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 - Games/sports  

Showing 1 to 8 of 8

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]
25 A most notable example of an ungracious Son, who/ in the pride of his heart denyed his own Father [Roxburghe 1.226-27]
46 A lamentable Ballad of a Combat lately performed neere London,/ betwixt Sir James Steward, and Sir George Wharton  [Euing 195]
55 A Warning to all lewd Livers./ By the Example of a disobedient Child [Roxburghe 3.262-63]
62 The Honour of a London Prentice [Pepys 3.252]
79 Win at first, lose at last; or, a New Game at Cards [Bodleian Wood 401 (149v-150r)]
93 Ragged, and Torne, and True./ Or, the poore mans Resoltion [Roxburghe 1.352-53]
102 Robin Hood newly reviv'd [Bodleian Wood 401 (27v-28r)]

Top Fives

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Authors

  • Anonymous  (6)
  • Price, Laurence (fl. 16...  (2)

Publishers

  • Clark, John  (7)
  • Passinger, Thomas  (7)
  • Thackeray, William  (7)
  • Coles (aka Coules), Fra...  (6)
  • Milbourn, Alexander  (6)

Topics

  •   Recreation - games/spor...  (8)
  • Bodies - clothing  (5)
  • Gender - masculinity  (4)
  • Places - English  (4)
  • Royalty - praise  (4)

Instruments

  • Cittern  (4)
  • Drum  (2)
  • Bones  (1)
  • Double bass  (1)
  • Fiddle  (1)

Performers

  • Vitale, Steno  (5)
  • Lewin, Giles  (3)
  • Watts, Andy  (3)
  • Banks, Steve  (2)
  • Couper, Victoria  (2)
  • Davis, Jub  (2)
  • Ellis, Vivien  (1)
  • Kerr, Nancy  (1)
  • Kirkpatrick, John  (1)
  • Mizrake, Raph  (1)
  • Prior, Maddy  (1)

Tunes

  • A new game at cards  (1)
  • All you that love good...  (1)
  • Bleeding heart  (1)
  • Chevy Chase  (1)
  • Down Plumpton Park  (1)
  • Old Simon the King  (1)
  • Robin Hood and the stra...  (1)
  • Welladay  (1)

Woodcuts

  • Alehouse scene with can...  (1)
  • Courtier and countryman  (1)
  • Courtly garden  (1)
  • Devil with erection  (1)
  • Gallant on tiles  (1)

Holding Libraries

  • British Library  (8)
  • Pepys Library, Magdalen...  (7)
  • No known copy  (6)
  • Beinecke Library, Yale...  (5)
  • Bodleian Library, Oxfor...  (5)

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