Broadside ballad
A printed ballad sold cheaply, blending news, entertainment, and traditional tunes.
A broadside ballad is a narrative song printed on one side of a single sheet of inexpensive paper, often accompanied by a woodcut illustration. It was a dominant form of popular entertainment and news dissemination in Britain, Ireland, and North America from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.
Quick Facts
- Earliest surviving broadsides
- early sixteenth century
- Typical retail price
- up to a penny
- Common typefaces
- blackletter (early), whiteletter/roman/italic (later)
- Notable production area
- Seven Dials area of London
Facts from the source article.
Development of broadsides
Ballads originated from minstrelsy of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which combined narrative poems with French courtly romances and Germanic legends popular in royal and noble courts. By the seventeenth century, minstrelsy had evolved into ballads on diverse topics, which authors could have printed and distributed. Printers used a single sheet of paper called a broadside, giving rise to the term broadside ballad. Crude woodcuts often appeared at the top. Historians Fumerton and Gerrini indicate that broadside ballads were printed in the millions in early modern England, spreading from London to the countryside. The printing press enabled cheap mass production. According to historian Adrian Johns, ballads were sold on London streets or in village squares for up to a penny, making them widely affordable. Stationers, who printed and published in the same location, held significant control over content, and printers of Protestant or Catholic leanings issued broadsides supporting their beliefs, as did those with political agendas.
The nature of broadsides
Early printing presses made single-sheet printing the easiest and cheapest method, allowing broadsides to sell for as little as a penny. They could be cut lengthways into broadslips or folded into chapbooks; collections of several songs in such formats were called garlands. The earliest surviving broadsides date from the early sixteenth century, though few from before 1550 remain. From 1556, the Stationers Company in London attempted to register all ballads, recording about 2,000 by 1600, but many more were likely printed due to ease of production. Scholars distinguish earlier blackletter broadsides, using heavy gothic print common until the mid-seventeenth century, from later whiteletter types in roman or italic, which were easier to read. A centre of production was the Seven Dials area of London. By the 1660s, over 400,000 broadsides were sold annually in England, near their peak. Travelling chapmen and balladeers sold them in city streets and at fairs, singing the songs to attract buyers. In Britain, popularity declined from the seventeenth century as chapbooks, then bound books and newspapers, replaced them, and they appear to have died out in the nineteenth century. They lasted longer in Ireland and, though produced in smaller numbers in North America, were significant in the eighteenth century, serving as propaganda during the American War of Independence.
Broadside ballads
According to music critic Peter Gammond, broadside ballads were mostly urban creations by hack writers, covering news like crimes and executions, moral lessons, or simple amusement—much like a modern newspaper. While a few traditional rural ballads appeared, crude doggerel was typical, believed to boost dramatic effect. The verses followed the rhythms of well-known tunes, sometimes naming the melody or printing the music. Familiar songs like 'Greensleeves' were used over and over, with the most popular ones repeated endlessly.
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