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"Broom of the Cowdenknowes", also known as "Bonny May", is a traditional Scottish love ballad, (Child 217, Roud 92). It has been traced to the seventeenth...

kings of England as a royal emblem. The broomscod, or seed-pod, was the personal emblem of Charles VI of France. Broom of the Cowdenknowes "The Plant...

from the Scottish Borders. It is also associated with a reel of the same name, also known as the Glasgow Reel. The story revolves around the rescue of Tam...

Sir Guy of Gisbourne (also spelled Gisburne, Gisborne, Gysborne, or Gisborn) is a character from the Robin Hood legends of English folklore. He first appears...

is the heroine of the Robin Hood legend in English folklore, often taken to be his lover. She is not mentioned in the early, medieval versions of the legend...

"The Ballad of Chevy Chase" is an English ballad, catalogued as Child Ballad 162 (Roud 223). There are two extant ballads under this title, both of which...

"The Unquiet Grave" is an Irish / English folk song in which a young man's grief over the death of his true love is so deep that it disturbs her eternal...

variant of this ballad ("Cruel Sister") uses the tune and refrain from "Lay the bent to the bonny broom", a widely used song (whose original lyrics are...

popular throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. It tells of how the eponymous character denies a dying man's love, then dies of grief soon after...

(Roud 6, Child 93) is an English-language ballad. It gives an account of the murder of a woman and her infant son by a man, in some versions, a disgruntled...

half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The tunes of most of the ballads...

Herries", "The Carpenter’s Wife", "The Banks of Italy", or "The House-Carpenter" – is a popular ballad dating from the mid-seventeenth century, when the earliest...

that his lover gave him a dinner of eels boiled in broo and that his hunting dogs died after eating the scraps of the meal, leading his mother to realize...

"The Cherry-Tree Carol" (Roud 453) is a ballad with the rare distinction of being both a Christmas carol and one of the Child Ballads (no. 54). The song...

this was the version that Walter Scott excerpted as Appendix. The Sloane MS. begins the second fytte with: "Heare begynethe þe ijd fytt I saye / of Sir thomas...

Hood and the Monk is a Middle English ballad and one of the oldest surviving ballads of Robin Hood. The earliest surviving document with the work is from...

"The Maid Freed from the Gallows" is one of many titles of a centuries-old folk song about a condemned maiden pleading for someone to buy her freedom...

(catalogued as number 26). The ballad centers three scavenger birds conversing about where and what they should eat. One tells the others of a newly slain knight...

"The Elfin Knight" (Roud 12, Child 2) is a traditional Scottish folk ballad of which there are many versions, all dealing with supernatural occurrences...

ballad 56 and number 477 in the Roud Folk Song Index. It is considered a Christmas carol and based on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (also called...