The Bagford Ballads were English

ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...

s collected by

John Bagford John Bagford (1650/51, Fetter Lane, London – 5 May 1716, Islington) was an English antiquarian, writer, bibliographer, ballad-collector, bookseller, and biblioclast. Life Originally a shoemaker by trade, his premises were in the Great Turnstil ...

(1651 - 1716) for Robert Harley, first

Earl of Oxford Earl of Oxford is a dormant title in the Peerage of England, first created for Aubrey de Vere by the Empress Matilda in 1141. His family was to hold the title for more than five and a half centuries, until the death of the 20th Earl in 1703. ...

. Bagford was originally a cobbler, but he became a book collector in his later years, and he assembled this set of ballads from the materials he had been collecting. Harley was interested in all sorts of antiquarian literature, and the

Harleian collection The Harleian Library, Harley Collection, Harleian Collection and other variants ( la, Bibliotheca Harleiana) is one of the main "closed" collections (namely, historic collections to which new material is no longer added) of the British Library in ...

is a major contribution to scholarship. The Bagford Ballads are generally folk compositions that document the last years of the Stuart reign in the close of the 17th century (a subject that was not remote for Harley). Therefore, in contrast to what Thomas Percy would collect, these ballads were not primarily antiquarian or efforts at preserving a vanished literature. Rather, they seem to have been selected for their value as genuine

folk art Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative art, decorative. The makers of folk art a ...

and populist

ephemera Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. Its etymological origins extends to Ancient Greece, with the common definition of the word being: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". Ambiguous in ...

. After Harley's death, the Bagford Ballads were obtained by the Duke of Roxburge. They were published by the

Ballad Society A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...

in 1878, edited by

Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth (2 September 1824–7 June 1908) was an English clergyman, known as an editor of ballads, poet and artist. Early life Born on 2 September 1824 at 3 Gray's Walk, Lambeth, he was a younger son (in a family of 13 children ...

Notes

External links

* Bagford Ballads at the Internet Archive
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1878 poetry books 17th-century poems British poetry anthologies Ballad collections English ballads 17th century in England {{Poetry-stub