Word on the Street
I had a message from Chris Little drawing my attention to 'The Word on the Street '. This is another excellent collection of broadside ballads from the National Library of Scotland. This nicely designed site contains about 1800 images and about 900 of those are ballads. The ballads are indexed and also grouped by theme. For each there are full publication details where known, a transcription and a PDF of the ballad. Well worth a visit - go to http://www.nls.uk/broadsides/index.html

(Aug 04)

Roy Palmer, Birmingham July 2004

Tradsong Discussion Group

Johnny Adams has done a great job for us in creating a discussion group on Yahoo. To see what it looks like go here (it will take you out of this site). If you wish to sign up please drop Johnny an e-mail and he will fix it for you.

Manchester Street Ballads

Eddie Cass sent me a copy of the new CD-ROM 'Manchester Street Ballads' asking whether I would like to review it. Since there haven't been any cries of outrage about my having included a review in our last news page I am happy to oblige - go here to read the review

Links

At the beginning of the 2003 I published a list of folks song resources on the web following a session at the November 2002 meeting. This list can be found here. I am grateful to Malcolm Douglas for \reminding me that this list is well buried and that I never did get around to incorporating it into the list of links accessed from the index page. This will be done! However, Malcolm went on to say that he had linked to that page from his own excellent list of web resources which can be found on the South Riding Folk Network pages - go here. This is an outstanding piece of work and I take my hat off to Malcolm for his industry. I recommend a visit.

Link to Australia

I was recently contacted by George Frampton who wrote:

"Since some of my research involves locating songs extant at the start of last century in the South-East, I find that a surprising number of them appear as sheet music in the National library of Australia's Music Catalogue - presumably sold internationally. Please pass on to the TSF membership. Try http://www.nla.gov.au/music/"

Old Bailey

Not strictly related to traditional song but possibly of use to researchers is www.oldbaileyonline.org , the proceedings of the Old Bailey, London 1674 to 1834. As well as transcripts you can view the original proceedings. Search for your favourite criminal (an ancestor, perhaps?), offence or sentence. Read some of the interesting articles including, for example, information on the minority communities of London.

Ravenscroft

I recently found another great piece of work on the Internet. Greg Lindahl has put together a site dedicated to Thomas Ravenscroft with facsimiles of Pammelia, Deuteromelia, Melismata and a great deal besides. Visit www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ravenscroft and all will be revealed. A very useful reference for early music