broadside ballads
Printed popular songs
Broadside ballads were popular songs printed on single sheets of paper and sold cheaply on the streets, especially in Britain from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.
The broadside was the format—one side of a large sheet—and the ballad was the content, typically set to a familiar tune.
Subjects ranged from sensational crimes and executions to political commentary and love songs: The peddler hawked broadside ballads for a penny each.
- woodcutsPrints from carved lumber
- wood blockPiece of cut lumber
- black letterAngular medieval script style
- printing pressMechanical text reproduction device
- rhyme schemesEnd-sound arrangement systems
stanzas · pamphlets · folk music · communal singing · common people · hawkers · gallows · public execution · satire · catchpenny · Reformation · marketplaces · execution · chapbooks · penny dreadfuls · urban culture · broadsheets · Renaissance
- vocal musicsong, vocals, soprano, tenor, alto
- anonymous poetryballads, folk songs, nursery rhymes, oral poetry, sea shanties
- balladsballads, balladry, power ballads, pop ballads, country ballads
- Colonial Americanacolonial laws, almanacs, Benjamin Franklin, William Bradford, Thomas Paine
- Colonial MusicYankee Doodle, Chester, shape-note singing, folk hymns, fife
- English Folktraditional ballads, Greensleeves, Scarborough Fair, Morris dancing, folk clubs
broadside balladscourt poetry
Formal verse for aristocrats
art song · madrigals · epic poetry · classical verse · metaphysical poetry
broadside balladsilluminated manuscripts
Hand-adorned medieval book pages
limited editions · bound volumes · collected works · leather-bound books · incunabula