The first version of this list was developed at the 'Forum Focus' session at the TSF meeting of 30^th November 2002 entitled 'Song Resources on the Web'. I have now (August 2004) checked each of the original links. I have also added a number of new sites. The classification is an attempt to give some structure to the list and can be argued with and may well change if I revise it. The 'stars' awarded to each site are a personal view indicating how it struck me after a relatively short wander around it. There is no dross on this list! Many of them are worth considerable amounts of your time if you can spare it. Have fun!

Child Ballads - Very slow to load (it is one very large file) this is the complete text of Child's 'The English and Scottish Popular Ballads' with all their variants. The work of Cathy Lynn Preston and Davis Stampe of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii. H H

The text of Charles Hindley's 'Curiosities of Street Literature' published in 1971. Work in progress - apart from the introductions only the section on gallows literature is complete. H

Oxford Book of Ballads - completed text of the 1910 edition edited by Quiller-Couch H H

Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads. An amazing site. Search for broadside ballads and, if they are there, view them as images in their original state. Basic information about dates and publishers. The most useful site on the web! H H H H

Pitts Broadsides - 13 from a collection of 216 in the University of Minnesota library. H

Catnach ballads - an index of the 80 (on forty sheets) from a volume held by the University of Minnesota Library. Of these 26 have been transcribed in full. H

Victorian Street Ballads - listing of a collection of broadsides in the library at Kent State University, Ohio. A few of the ballads have been scanned and can be downloaded H H

The Music of Thomas Ravenscroft - Another great piece of work by Greg Lindahl who has put together a site dedicated to Thomas Ravenscroft with facsimiles of Pammelia, Deuteromelia, Melismata and a great deal besides. A very useful reference for early music. Also a number of other links to explore. H H H H

Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection - Some description of the work of Flanders in Vermont and indexes to recorded and printed material H

Child’s ‘English and Scottish Ballads’ - The 1860 edition

This first attempt by the master of the ballad can now be found online as part of the ‘Making of America’ project. The slightly less good news is that this is a very clunky site - each page (including blank pages, which is very off-putting!) is scanned as an image. There is, though, a downloadable text version as a single big file for each volume. Unfortunately there is not, it appears, a single link that will take you to all eight volumes - so here they are separately H H

Wolf Collection. A wonderful resource based on the work of John Quincy Wolf who started to collect songs in the Ozarks in the 1940s. There is a great list of songs for which texts can be viewed. For many it is also possible to listen to the original singers - Including the wonderful Almeda Riddle. This is a top-notch site H H H H

Australian Folksongs. The work of Mark Crixa - songs and music together with information for a good selection of Australian songs. Midi sound files play through Quicktime. H H

Joseph Taylor - Another site originally started by Garry Gillard and now moved to a new home. Contains a lot of interesting information about one of the most famous of all folk singers H H H

The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection - Another fine collection of songs from the Ozarks. 1594 songs for you to listen to including a separate section on Child ballads. Another good reason to go broadband! H H H

The Farne Project. A cracking site (we heard all about it at the November 2003 meeting in Gateshead). An astonishing array of material from the North-East - Songs and a great deal besides, searchable, listenable and with pictures. H H H H

The online index to the James Madison Carpenter collection. A huge piece of work but does not (yet!) contain any song texts H H

Windyridge CDs site. A catalogue of CDs for sale of music hall performers but also includes useful background, pictures and biographies of music hall performers H H

The Lester S Levy collection of sheet music at Johns Hopkins University. A nicely designed site containing this collection of American sheet music with clickable images of the whole of the piece H H

Historic American Sheet Music - another sheet music collection, this time at Duke University H

A collection of 19^th Century sheet music from Australia. Many of the songs are actually transnational so can be a useful source in searches related to the UK H H

Martin Nail's guide to folk clubs, musicians and everything in the UK - a very useful reference H H H

A directory compiled by Malcolm Douglas for the South Riding Folk Network. This page is devoted to internet resources and includes a number that I have missed H H H H

American Folklife Centre. Part of the Library of Congress website and an important source of information about recordings of American culture H H

American Memory - another Library of Congress site containing a number of separate song resources (go to the Performing Arts header). Once you are there it will take a little effort to find your way through - but it is worth the effort to hear some great recordings (main tip - the songs are accessed through the links in the header bar). Good loading speed! H H H

Cantaria - a collection of 'Bardic' songs forming part of the Chivalry Music community of independent artists from Missouri. A collection of songs (mainly celtic) with MP3s H

The Ballad Index. A reference work whose definition of ballad stretches fairly widely but which contains a lot of useful data. H H

Irish Traditional Music Association web site. Explainds the work of the Association and describes it collections and how to gain access to them H

British Music Hall Society - disappointing if you are looking for information on the music hall. This will only tell you about the Society. Let down by frames which restrict the view. Some useful links but a couple caused crashes H

The British Library public catalogue - search for publications and find out about other services H

George Formby made to the repertoire of singers in the 20^th Century. Visit and find a lot of Formby stuff, including the lyrics to 170 songs H H H

German and international songs - part of Frank Petersohn's amazing site. Contains an amazing variety of songs, some folkier than others. Also midi files of many of the tunes. Worth exploring on a rainy day H H

Originally compiled by Gary Gillard, now run by the family themselves. News, merchandise and transcriptions of several of their songs H H

StewartHendrickson, a folk enthusiast from Seattle has put together a small collection of bawdy broadsides as well as a few fiddle tunes. H

A resource designed for C17th re-enactment enthusiasts, this section gives as part of the background a small collection of black letter ballads H H

The Contemplator (Lesley Nelson-Burns) has assembled this collection of folk music of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and America. Nice design and midis that play as you view or can be downloaded. Songs in various categories (Sea, War, America etc.) as well as some useful links. Another place for a rainy day! H H H

Songs collected by Donagh McDonagh - Niall McDonagh's compilation of the texts over 300 Irish songs from his fathers collection as sent in to him as a result of his programme 'Ireland is Singing' on Radio Eirann. No tunes are given and the sources are not well documented but the site is indexed and there are some unusual variants here H H

The late Bruce Olsen's web site - his motto quoted at the end of the index page is 'keep at it, muddling through always works. Well this site is a glorious idiosyncratic muddle with a lot of good stuff on ballads and folk song touched by wisdom. H H

Index of poetry in printed miscellanies, 1640 - 1682 - the work of Adam Smyth as the foundation of his PhD thesis H

Musical Traditions. Rod Stradling's magnum opus. Just continues to grow and to get better H H H

The Cyberhymnal - a collection of popular hymns listed alphabetically and searchable. Midis playable for each hymn. Includes biographical details for the writer/composer. H H

English Folk Play Research Home Page - Eddie Cass and Peter Millington's wonderful collection of material about traditional plays for the Traditional Drama Research Group. The site includes 180 play texts as well as images, 600 links to relevant sites and lots more laid out in an exemplary fashion H H H

Family History site operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Searchable on-line version of the 1881 census as well as other useful material H H H

UK Census on line - patchy coverage of the UK 1891 Census. If you are lucky the transcription will cover the area you are looking for (Devon and Cornwall are quite well covered) but this is being done by volunteers and is very much work in progress. It is also hard to navigate successfully H H

Three useful places for find second-hand books - there are others

Make em laugh - a nice collection of monologues put together by Paul Wilkinson. Includes classics performed by Marriot Edgar, Stanley Holloway, Billy Bennett and others H H H H

Martin Graebe

24^th August 2004