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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.

Employment - Female   Bodleian Library, Oxford University   Beinecke Library, Yale University  

Showing 1 to 11 of 11

9 A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall [Roxburghe 3.148-49]
23 The Countrey FARMER:/ OR, THE/ Buxome VIRGIN [Roxburghe 2.77]
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]
48 A pretty Ballad of the Lord of Lorn, and the false Steward [Pepys 1.494-95]
50 A New Song of Lulla By,/ OR, Father Peter's Policy Discovered [Bodleian Wood E25 (110)]
57 The Shepherd and the King, and of Gillian the Shepherds Wife, with her churlish Answer [Euing 332]
59 Flora's farewell: Or,/ The Shepherds Love-passion Song [Euing 121]
95 A new Ballad of the Souldier and Peggy [Roxburghe 1.370-71]
114 The Woman to the PLOW;/ And the Man to the HEN-ROOST [Euing 397]
120 The Happy Husbandman:/ OR,/ Country Innocence [Pepys 3.45]

Top Fives

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Authors

  • Anonymous  (8)
  • Crimsal, Richard, attri...  (1)
  • Deloney, Thomas (d. in...  (1)
  • Parker, Martin (fl. 162...  (1)
  • Price, Laurence (fl. 16...  (1)

Publishers

  • Clark, John  (8)
  • Coles (aka Coules), Fra...  (8)
  • Passinger, Thomas  (8)
  • Thackeray, William  (8)
  • Vere, Thomas  (8)

Topics

  •   Employment - female  (8)
  • Gender - femininity  (8)
  • Gender - masculinity  (8)
  • Environment - animals  (7)
  • Gender - courtship  (7)

Instruments

  • Cittern  (4)
  • Fiddle  (2)
  • Bassoon  (1)
  • Dulcimer (improvised)  (1)
  • Jew's harp  (1)

Performers

  • Vitale, Steno  (4)
  • Watts, Andy  (4)
  • Lewin, Giles  (3)
  • Couper, Victoria  (1)
  • Ellis, Vivien  (1)

Tunes

  • Greensleeves  (2)
  • Chevy Chase  (1)
  • Flora farewell  (1)
  • I have for all good wiv...  (1)
  • In peascod time  (1)
  • My young Mary  (1)
  • Peg and the soldier  (1)
  • The French levalto  (1)
  • The bride's good-morrow  (1)
  • The country farmer  (1)

Woodcuts

  • Countryman with staff  (2)
  • How-de-do-man  (2)
  • Welcoming woman  (2)
  • Bed-scene with suicidal...  (1)
  • Chapman with box  (1)

Holding Libraries

  • British Library  (11)
  • Pepys Library, Magdalen...  (11)
  • National Library of Sco...  (10)
  •   Bodleian Library, Oxfor...  (9)
  •   Beinecke Library, Yale...  (8)

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