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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.

Publisher Name Unknown, Lost, Or Not Given.   Bodies - Injury  

Showing 1 to 6 of 6

2 A Memorable Song on the unhappy hunting in Chevy-Chase, between Earl/ Piercy of England, and Earl Dowglas of Scotland [Roxburghe 3.66-67]
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]
15 The Lamentable and Tragicall History of Titus An-/dronicus [Folger L252a]
56 A CARROUSE/ TO THE/ Emperour, the Royal Pole,/ And the much-wrong'd DUKE of LORRAIN [Roxburghe 4.2]
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]
119 A Voyage to Virginia;/ OR,/ The Valiant Soldiers Fare-well to his Love [Bodleian Douce 2 (236b)]

Top Fives

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Authors

  • Anonymous  (4)
  • D'Urfey, Thomas (1653?–...  (1)
  • Deloney, Thomas (d. in...  (1)

Publishers

  •   Publisher name unknown,...  (6)
  • Clark, John  (5)
  • Coles (aka Coules), Fra...  (4)
  • Gilbertson, William  (4)
  • Onley, William  (4)

Topics

  • Gender - masculinity  (6)
  •   Bodies - injury  (5)
  • Politics - domestic  (5)
  • Emotions - love  (4)
  • Employment - sailors/so...  (4)

Instruments

  • Cittern  (2)
  • Drum  (1)
  • Fiddle  (1)
  • Theorbo  (1)

Performers

  • Lewin, Giles  (2)
  • Vitale, Steno  (2)
  • Banks, Steve  (1)
  • Couper, Victoria  (1)
  • Ellis, Vivien  (1)
  • Giles, Ian  (1)
  • Kenny, Elizabeth  (1)
  • Kerr, Nancy  (1)
  • Mulroy, Nicholas  (1)

Tunes

  • Chevy Chase  (2)
  • Fortune my foe  (1)
  • Hark the thundering can...  (1)
  • I live not where I love  (1)
  • Welladay  (1)

Woodcuts

  • Carousing man with gobl...  (1)
  • Countryman with staff  (1)
  • Courtly garden  (1)
  • Rosamund and King  (1)
  • Titus Andronicus compos...  (1)

Holding Libraries

  • Bodleian Library, Oxfor...  (6)
  • Pepys Library, Magdalen...  (6)
  • British Library  (5)
  • National Library of Sco...  (4)
  • No known copy  (4)

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