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 - Masculinity   Kerr, Nancy   Kirkpatrick, John  

Showing 1 to 12 of 12

6 A most sweet Song of an English Merchant,/ borne at Chichester [Roxburghe 1.104-05]
36 A Courtly new ballad of the Princely wooing of the/ fair Maid of London by King Edward [Euing 51]
44 The Lamentation of Master Pages wife of Plimmouth, who being enforced by her Parents to wed him against/ her will, did most wickedly consent to his murther [Pepys 1.126-27]
48 A pretty Ballad of the Lord of Lorn, and the false Steward [Pepys 1.494-95]
62 The Honour of a London Prentice [Pepys 3.252]
72 A Lamentable Ballad of Fair Rosamond, King Henry the Second’s Concubine,/ Who was put to death by Queen Elinor, in Woodstock Bower near Oxford [Pepys 1.498-99]
83 The dying tears of a true Lover forsaken,/ Made on his Death=bed [Euing 64]
94 An Excellent Ditty, called the Shepherds wooing Dulcina [Roxburghe 2.402-03]
95 A new Ballad of the Souldier and Peggy [Roxburghe 1.370-71]
102 Robin Hood newly reviv'd [Bodleian Wood 401 (27v-28r)]
111 The Famous Fight at Malago,/ Or, The Englishmen's Victory over the Spaniards [Pepys 4.204]
113 A New little Northren Song called,/ Under and over, over and under [Pepys 1.264-65]