Read Child Ballads (Wikipedia)

The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second 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 were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s.

Burl Ives’s 1949 album, The Return of the Wayfaring Stranger, for example, includes two: “Lord Randall” and “The Divil and the Farmer”. ❧

Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 08:59AM

In 1956 four albums (consisting of eight LPs) of 72 Child Ballads sung by Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd were released: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Vols. 1–4. ❧

Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 09:05AM

Illustration by Arthur Rackham of Child Ballad 26, “The Twa Corbies” ❧

Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 09:06AM

Joan Baez sang ten Child ballads distributed among her first five albums, the liner notes of which identified them as such. ❧

Annotated on August 04, 2020 at 09:07AM