Editing Ballad (section)

===Broadsides===
{{Main article|Broadside (music)}}
[[File:Tragical Ballad 18th century.png|right|thumb|An 18th-century broadside ballad: ''The tragical ballad: or, the lady who fell in love with her serving-man''.]]
Broadside ballads (also known as 'broadsheet', 'stall', 'vulgar' or 'come all ye' ballads) were a product of the development of cheap print in the 16th century. They were generally printed on one side of a medium to large sheet of poor quality paper. In the first half of the 17th century, they were printed in black-letter or gothic type and included multiple, eye-catching illustrations, a popular tune title, as well as an alluring poem.<ref>E. Nebeker, [http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/page/heyday-of-the-broadside-ballad "The Heyday of the Broadside Ballad"], ''English Broadside Ballad Archive, University of California-Santa Barbara'', retrieved 15 August 2011.</ref> By the 18th century, they were printed in white letter or roman type and often without much decoration (as well as tune title). These later sheets could include many individual songs, which would be cut apart and sold individually as "slip songs." Alternatively, they might be folded to make small cheap books or "chapbooks" which often drew on ballad stories.<ref>G. Newman and L. E. Brown, ''Britain in the Hanoverian Age, 1714–1837: An Encyclopedia'' (Taylor & Francis, 1997), pp. 39-40.</ref> They were produced in huge numbers, with over 400,000 being sold in England annually by the 1660s.<ref>B. Capp, 'Popular literature', in B. Reay, ed., ''Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England'' (Routledge, 1985), p. 199.</ref> Tessa Watt estimates the number of copies sold may have been in the millions.<ref>T. Watt, ''Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640'' (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 11.</ref> Many were sold by travelling [[chapmen]] in city streets or at fairs.<ref>M. Spufford, ''Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England'' (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 111-28.</ref> The subject matter varied from what has been defined as the traditional ballad, although many traditional ballads were printed as broadsides. Among the topics were love, marriage, religion, drinking-songs, legends, and early journalism, which included disasters, political events and signs, wonders and prodigies.<ref>B. Capp, 'Popular literature', in B. Reay, ed., ''Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England'' (Routledge, 1985), p. 204.</ref>