List of the Child Ballads


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The Child Ballads is the colloquial name given to a collection of 305 ballads collected in the 19th century by Francis James Child and originally published in ten volumes between 1882 and 1898 under the title The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.[1][2]

Two black birds in a leafless tree above a grassy landscape with a cloudy sky and dark mountains in the background

A woman sits upright in a four-poster bed listening to a short creature in red clothing standing on a chair at the foot of the bed

"‘O waken, waken, Burd Isbel", from "Young Beichan", Child Ballad 53.

Following are synopses of the stories recounted in the ballads in Child's collection.[3] Since Child included multiple versions of most ballads, the details of a story can vary widely. The synopses presented here reflect the summaries in Child's text, but also rely on other sources as well as the ballads themselves.[4]

  1. ^ Child, Francis James (1890). The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Retrieved 2017-11-19.
  2. ^ Fumerton, Patricia; Guerrini, Anita; McAbee, Kris (2010). Ballads and Broadsides in Britain, 1500–1800. Ashgate Publishing. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-7546-6248-8.
  3. ^ Waltz, Robert B.; Engle, David G. (2012). "The Traditional Ballad Index: An Annotated Bibliography of the Folk Songs of the English-Speaking World". California State University, Fresno. Retrieved 2017-11-19.
  4. ^ Child, Francis James (1904). Sargent, Helen Child; Kittredge, George Lyman (eds.). The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Retrieved 2018-01-28.