Child Ballads

One commonly used source for ballads is Francis Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. However, if you're looking for pre-1600 ballads, only a few of Child's ballads survive in manuscripts which pre-date 1600, and few of them have music, although other ballads with later words use music which can be dated before 1600. I plan on eventually having some documentation of them, words and music, but for now I merely have a list from Livingston (apparently a serious conservative on this topic ... and she didn't provide a footnote) of Child ballads for which pre-1600 manuscripts are known. In all these cases no music is known. I took names and manuscript details for these out of MacLeach and Bronson. Child probably has additional details not found in this list.

Child Ballads with pre-1600 music

283 Heigh ho holiday, music in Holborne's Pauens, galliards, almains, etc, 1599.
Shaking of the Sheets? 16th c. version is different from Playford, Bronson has details.

Child Ballads with pre-1600 text but no pre-1600 music

22 St. Stephen and Herod, Sloan MS 2593 "15th century"
23 Judas, Trinity College, Cambridge MS B. 14.39 "13th century"
111 Crow and Pie, Bod. MS Rawl. C.813, c. 1500.
115 Robyn and Gandeleyn, Sloan MS 2593 "c. 1450"
116 Adam Bell, broadsides? XXX
117 Bold Dickie
119 Robin Hood and the Monk, Cambridge MS Ff.4.48 "15th century"
121 Robin Hood and the Potter, Cambridge MS Ee.4.35 "late 15th century"
161 The Battle of Otterburn, Cotton MS. Cleopatra C.iv "c. 1550", the battle was in 1388
162 The Hunting of Cheviot, MS. Ashmole 48, Bodleian "c. 1550"
168 (Appendix) ?
178 Captain Car, or Edom O Gordon, Cotton MS. Vespasian 4 xxv, 67, "16th century"
187 [not noted by Livingston] Joc o the Side, "Assist me now, you doleful dames" in MS Rawl poet. 185 (c. 1590) has a tune direction of "Hobbinoble and John a Side", and it seems to have a similar structure to Child's later ballads.
273 (Appendix II) King Edward the Fourth and a Tanner of Tamworth, ?

That's 14 out of 305. An additional half-dozen Child ballads have a ballad with a similar name listed in the Stationers' Register before 1600; these are (says Livingston):

39 Tam Lin
56 Dives and Lazarus, "18th century broadsides"
124 The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield, Pepys, ii, 100, AI2829, 1557/8.
192 The Lochmaben Harper, "end of 18th century", the only evidence of pre-1600 is entries in the Stationer's register regarding blind harpers.
271 Lord of Lorn and the False Steward, AI 1546, 1580. To the tune of Green-Sleeves (and it's entered one month after the first Greensleeves ballad).
273 King Edward the Fourth and a Tanner of Tamworth, Pepys, ii, 129, registered 1586, AI 1360.

Presumably most of these are discussed in Rollin's book on the Stationer's register.

If you search in William Olson's listing of 17th century ballads for the word "Child", you can find a large number of references to more recent Child ballads.

There is also a longer article on the web entitled Early Child Ballads.

There's also this webpage about Child Ballads.

Return to the Sixteenth Century Ballads project.

Greg Lindahl