Welcome to the 100 Ballads website!
We should begin by explaining that there are actually 120 ballads on this website but appropriate historical tunes have only been identified for 100 of them, hence the title.
We here identify and present a body of the biggest hits from seventeenth-century England. Such an exercise has never been attempted before, and we hope that 100 Ballads will prove stimulating and valuable to a wide range of users.
If you want to know what people most liked to hear, read and look at in early-modern England, then you have come to the right place!
This section presents a basic guide to the website, written to help visitors find their way around.
Part A: General features
At the top right of every page on the website, you can use the tabs to access the following resources:
Here, you will find links to a set of essays that, taken together, should provide a broad introduction to seventeenth-century broadside ballads in general and to the 100 Ballads project in particular. There are essays entitled ‘The ballad business’, ‘Methodology’, ‘Texts, tunes and pictures’, ‘Audiences, performances and recordings’, ‘The musicians reflect’, ‘Collectors and collections’ and ‘Broadside ballads and the origins of pop’.
This provides links to sections entitled ‘The history of the project’, ‘Project participants’, ‘Funding and partners’ and ‘Acknowledgements’.
This provides links not only to the ‘User’s guide’ but also to a section entitled ‘Conventions of presentation’. This explains how we have approached the task of displaying our materials.
On the left side of the search page, you can use a keyword to ‘search everything’ or, if you prefer, you can restrict your search to particular sections on the website, using the dropdown headings. Bear in mind that clicking the ballad title in the search results will take you to the main page for this ballad but, upon arrival, you will need to scroll down to find the relevant section (or use the ‘On this page’ list of contents, located on the right beneath the ballad image, to jump to the relevant section).
The boxes on the right of the search page enable you to generate lists of all the ballads on the website that share particular topics, authors, tunes or woodcuts (pictures). You can also search for all the recordings that feature particular performers or musical instruments. In addition, you can generate lists of all the ballads that were, at one time or another, issued by particular publishers, and all the modern libraries that hold copies of our 120 featured ballads. Please note that the information on publishers and libraries takes account of all known editions of the ballads, rather than just the selected editions that appear in facsimile on this website. Once you have clicked on a ballad title in the results and found your way to the relevant page, you may need to investigate the various editions (under Publication history) in order to find the one that connects to your chosen publisher or library. There is further information on this below.
The search boxes on the right also enable you to combine various different terms into a single search.
On the right side of the home-page, you will find a series of 'top fives' that identify at a glance the most frequently encountered elements on the website (authors, publishers, topics, instruments, performers, tunes, woodcut pictures and libraries).
Part B: Specific ballads
The home-page also allows you to access the individual ballads that appear on the website, listed one by one in blocks of twenty (use the bar at the bottom of each page to move between these pages). On the page for each individual ballad, you can engage with the contents in the following ways (use the ‘On this page’ list of contents to jump straight to a particular section, if you wish):
For each of our 120 ballads, we have selected a ‘featured edition’ (in most cases, several editions were published during the early-modern period, and we have chosen a particular example for display).
From the ballad image, you can access the following features:
(a) Recordings
Tunes survive for 100 of our 120 ballads and we have therefore made a new recording in all but twenty cases. To listen to the entire recording of a particular ballad, click the sound-bar at the top of the screen (if there is no bar, then there is no recording because the tune is lost).
You can also listen to the songs verse by verse, if you prefer. For this feature, simply click the individual verses (each verse has a surrounding box that is visible when you hover over it).
Occasionally, we have not recorded every single verse of particularly long ballads. Unrecorded verses have no boxes on the facsimile image. Sadly, there will be no music if you click them.
Even more rarely, there are two recordings of an individual song, either because we tried two different tunes or because we recorded the two parts of a ballad as separate tracks. In such cases, you will see two sound- bars at the top of the screen (but the verse-by-verse feature only connects with one of these recordings).
There is a volume control on each sound-bar, and clicking on the three dots will give you the option to download the recording.
(b) Featured tune histories
Each ballad that includes an indication of the intended melody has a ‘featured tune history’. This can be accessed directly from the facsimile image by hovering over the tune name or description in the ballad’s title, and then clicking on the small blue box that appears. If two or more tune titles are nominated on the ballad , hovering will reveal the one that we have used for our recording.
This section provides detailed information on surviving versions of the tune, its origins and its ‘career’ during the early-modern period. Many tunes were recycled from one ballad to another, and we have therefore also included a list of other songs that were sung to the featured melody under one or other of its names. For each song in the list, a brief synopsis is provided, along with information on the main topics covered by the text.
The featured tune history can also be found by scrolling down to the relevant section on the ballad page or using the ‘On this page’ list of contents to jump straight to it. In other words, there are two ways of accessing the same text.
(c) Featured woodcut histories
For every song that includes pictures, there is a ‘featured woodcut history’. To access this, hover over the woodcut images and find the one with a blue box that, when clicked, brings up the ‘featured woodcut history’.
Woodcuts, like tunes, were often used on more than one ballad. Where an image on one of our ballads also appears on a song or songs elsewhere on the website, we have duplicated access to the woodcut history on all the relevant ballads. In such cases, you will notice that more than one of the woodcuts has a blue box. One of these will give you access to the ‘featured woodcut history’ (see above) and any further boxes will allow you to open a ‘bonus woodcut history’ (in other words, the image is a featured woodcut on another ballad but we have reproduced the information here).
The woodcut histories present material on the ‘careers’ of the featured pictures during the seventeenth century. A list of other ballads that make use of the same image or a close copy is provided. For each song in the list, a brief synopsis is provided, along with information on the main topics covered by the text.
The featured woodcut history can also be found by scrolling down to the relevant section on the ballad page or using the ‘On this page’ list of contents to jump straight to it. In other words, there are two ways of accessing the same text.
Beneath the facsimile image, you will find purple tabs for the main topics that are addressed in the lyrics of the ballad. These are presented in alphabetical order. We have devised a list of 21 main topics, with a total of almost 300 sub-topics. These topics are also used in the lists of additional ballads found in the featured tune and woodcut histories (see below). You can click on each topic/sub-topic to find other ballads on the website that touch upon the same theme.
There are many additional references to our topics in the various essays and sections that appear throughout the site. To find all of these, click the ‘Search’ tab at the top right of each page, and enter your chosen topic as a keyword.
This presents a short essay on the ballad under consideration, setting it into historical context. Frequently, the ‘song history’ also considers the reasons for a song’s popularity and discusses any references to the song that have been found in other sources.
This section provides detailed information on surviving versions of the tune, its origins and its ‘career’ during the early-modern period. Many tunes were recycled from one ballad to another, and we have therefore also included a list of other songs that were sung to the featured melody under one or other of its names. For each song in the list, a brief synopsis is provided, along with information on the main topics covered by the text.
The ‘featured tune history’ can also be accessed by clicking on the tune name or instruction in the ballad title on the facsimile image (see ‘facsimile image and associated links’, above, for a fuller explanation).
Ballad-pictures, like tunes, were often used on several different songs. The woodcut histories present material on the ‘careers’ of the featured pictures during the seventeenth century. A list of other ballads that make use of the same image or a close copy is provided. For each song in this list, a brief synopsis is provided, along with information on the main topics covered by the text.
The ‘featured woodcut history’ can also be accessed by clicking on the relevant picture within the facsimile image of the ballad at the top of the page (see ‘facsimile image and associated links’, above, for a fuller explanation).
This presents information on other texts, mainly but not exclusively from the period 1500-1700, that seem to be related in some direct way to the ballad under discussion.
Further down the page, the column on the left provides a full transcript of the ballad’s lyrics. Here, you can play recordings of the individual verses by clicking directly on the text.
On the rare occasions when we have not recorded every single verse – usually because of the exceptional length of some ballads – the omitted sections are enclosed in square brackets.
Fundamental to our 'popularity scoring' system, here, you will find a separate tab for every edition of the ballad that is known or conjectured to have been published between 1557 and 1711. For each edition, there is information on the title, tune, publishers and date, along with a list of surviving copies and the libraries that hold them.
You can also click on the names of the publishers and libraries to identify other ballads on the site that are connected to them. Please note that the information on publishers and libraries takes account of all known editions of the ballads, rather than just the selected editions that appear in facsimile on this website. Once you have clicked on a ballad title and found your way to the relevant page, you will therefore need to investigate the various ‘editions’ in order to find the one that connects to your chosen publisher or library (you can use the ‘On this page’ list of contents to jump straight to the relevant section).
This section shows how and why the ballad has been identified as particularly successful. It reveals which of our three lists - A, B or C - includes the ballad, and it provides information on the points that have been awarded (a full discussion of the underlying methodology can be found in the 'Methodology' essay).
Under this heading, click the ballad title for brief information on the recorded performance. There is usually only one performance but very occasionally you will see two tabs, indicating that we either recorded the song to two different tunes or that we recorded the two halves of the ballad as separate tracks.
Ballad melodies were often known by more than one title (alternatives are discussed in the ‘featured tune history’ for each ballad). The ‘standard tune name’ is the one by which the tune is usually identified today (following the work of Claude Simpson, except in cases where he overlooked a tune). If you click on the title, you will see links to any other ballads on the website that use the same melody.
There are often many additional references to our standard tune names in the various essays and sections that appear throughout the site. To find these, click the ‘Search’ tab at the top right of each page, and enter the standard tune name as a keyword. Note, however, that you may also need to search for the tune under its alternative names – these can be found in the ‘featured tune histories’.
Within the website, each featured woodcut has been given a standard name – a brief descriptive label – to facilitate cross-referencing in the various essays and commentaries. For each ballad, there is one featured woodcut, but you will sometimes see more than one of the ballad’s pictures listed in this section – this happens when additional pictures on a ballad happen to be the featured woodcuts on other songs. You can click on the woodcut name(s) to see if any other ballads on the site feature the same picture.
There are often many additional references to our standard woodcut names in the various essays and sections that appear throughout the site. To find them all, click the ‘Search’ tab at the top right of each page, and enter the standard woodcut name as a keyword (if you place the term in quotation marks, you will avoid unwanted results).
Most early-modern ballads were published anonymously but where information on authorship is available, it is provided here. Clicking on the name will provide links to any other ballads on the website that were also composed by this individual.
Information on the ballad that comes to light after the launch of the website will be included here.
Christopher Marsh and Angela McShane