Tech: Ballad Index 7.2 Released

Subject: Tech: Ballad Index 7.2 Released
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 12 Jul 26 - 07:15 AM

Mudcatters --

After an unusually complicated period of testing and breaking things, I'm proud to announce the release of Traditional Ballad Index Version 7.2.

I'll put the full "What's New" update below, but there are three new features of particular note.

-- A new search engine. This one really and truly WORKS; if you want it to search for, say, "War of 1812," it will find all instances of those words in whichever field you specify. The one warning is that it downloads more than 15 MB of data into your browser, so don't try it with a metered connection.

-- A new Contents file, based on Roud Numbers. This one lists all songs in the Index which have a Roud Number in the order of Roud Number. This not only lets you search based on Roud Numbers, it also lets you see conveniently when a particular Roud Number corresponds to more than one Ballad Index entry (for example, Roud #2 corresponds to no fewer than seven items in the Ballad Index).

-- A new "Ballad Index Library." This is a place where we will be accumulating papers and reprints of items that may be of interest to ballad scholars. It only has two items so far (Bruce Olson's Broadside Ballad Index and an annotated edition of M.C. Dean's "The Flying Cloud"), but I hope we'll be able to add more. For instance, in the next month or so, I will be completing the FINAL version of my edition of "The Gest of Robyn Hode," which will probably tell you more than you will ever want to know about that romance. It is also a pretty thorough examination of the medieval Robin Hood legend.

One other note about this release: I haven't yet managed to generate the PDF edition of the Index or the Windows standalone runtime. I hope these will be finished within a week. I'm not sure anyone uses them anyway....

And with all that said, here are the full "What's New" notes for version 7.2.


What's New in the Ballad Index
Version 7.2 (July 2026)

Structural or Functional Changes

This version features two new tools for searching the Traditional Ballad Index. One is our new high-powered search engine, which is much more flexible and powerful than what went before. The other is the Table of Contents sorted by Roud Number.

Not every song in the Ballad Index has a Roud Number (in fact, roughly a quarter don't), but the use of the Roud Contents will let you conveniently see how many Ballad Index entries correspond to each Roud Number. (For instance, as of this writing, there are seven Ballad Index records for Roud #2.)

We have also started what we are calling the Ballad Index Library -- a collection of publications of interest to ballad scholars. There isn't much there yet, but we hope it will grow.

The Roud Index
This edition coordinates with Roud Index release 125.

Materials Added in this Edition
The following books were fully indexed in Version 7.2:

• Leslie Daiken, Out She Goes: Dublin Street Rhymes with a Commentary
  
• Frank Graham, Geordie Song Book
  
• Clara Le Grande Swan, A Collection of Ballads and Folk Songs from Morning Sun, Iowa
  
• Martin Page, Kiss Me Goodnight, Sergeant Major
  
• Martin Page, For Gawdsake Don't Take Me
  
• Roy Palmer, What a Lovely War: British Soldiers' Songs from the Boer War to the Present Day
  
• Fergus Woods, Kind Friends Lend an Ear: Songs and Stories from County Monaghan
  

The following items were partially indexed in Version 7.2:

• Hamish Henderson (as Seumas Mór MacEanruig), Ballads of World War II
  
• The Derek Piotr Fieldwork Archive (field recording collection; electronic, updated)
  
• And a whole pile of mid-nineteenth-century songsters (for these, I generally indexed the songs which have a Roud Number):
  AdolphousMorningGlorySongster, AgnesWallace-LittleGemSongster, ArtfulJoeSongster, BarneyNoraSongster, BarneysCourtshipSongster, BrighamYoungSongster, BrokenDownSongster, CanadianBoatSongSongster, CentralParkShowSongster, Cotton-DownInACoalMineSongster, DollyVardenSongster, Harrigan-Hart-MulcaheyTwinsSongster, Howes-GreatLondonFemaleMinstrelSongster, JennieHughes-DollyVardenSongster, JohnMBurke-DublinCarmanSongster, JohnnyRoach-GreatestSongster, JohnnyRoach-GreatSensationSongster, JohnnyRoach-InternationalSongster, JohnnyRoach-NewVarietySongster, KissBehindTheDoorSongster, LallaRookhSongster, Lawlor-BarneyTheGuideSongster, NowILayMeDownToSleepSongster, Pastor-DownInACoalMineSongster, Robinsons-BeautifulAmazonSongster, RollingHomeInTheMorningSongster, RovinIrishBoySongster, Russells-GooseAndIngunsSongster, Sheridan-Macks-CharacterSongs, ShesAGalOfMineSongster, Vivians-WhoStoleTheDonkeySongster, WallaceSistersSongster
  

This brings the total number of books indexed fully or partially to 601 (391 of them indexed in their entirety), plus three journals (two of them fully indexed) and four electronic resources, with hundreds of other books cited in ADDITIONAL entries or the SAME TUNE field.

We now have 18,588 different songs (421 more than in the last edition, which had 18,167), under 33735 titles. At least 1622 songs were added or had their entries updated in version 7.2.
The Supplemental Tradition now contains full or partial texts for 1144 songs.
There are 958 songs for which the NOTES exceed 500 words; 423 with at least 1000 words of notes; 67 with at least 5000 words of notes.
917 songs have enough data in the notes to call for a bibliography of at least three items.

Fun statistics:
The five most popular songs:
1. Bonny Barbara Allan (193 references)
2. The Golden Vanity (146 references)
3. The Gypsy Laddie (144 references)
4T. Lord Thomas and Fair Annet (125 references)
4T. Frog Went A-Courting (125 references)
As you can see, the most popular non-Child Ballad is Frog Went A-Courting; this is the highest a non-Child ballad has ever been ranked. Next down the list, among non-Child Ballads, is Pretty Fair Maid (The Maiden in the Garden; The Broken Token) [Laws N42], with 94 references, followed by John Henry [Laws I1], with 93; they're #15 and #16. (I observe that none of those totals rose much. An effect of doing all those songsters, which don't include as many ballads.)

We currently have 34 keywords that have been used on at least 500 songs; 14 of them have been used on at least 1000 songs. The 14, with the number of times they are used: nonballad (5294), love (2544), death (2476), courting (2381), religious (1762), humorous (1761), separation (1376), drink (1306), work (1171), food (1111), marriage (1095), travel (1091), ship (1056), soldier (1023).

8691 songs -- somewhat less than half the song in the database -- have only one reference (or, in a few cases, none), meaning that 9897 have at least two.
14238 songs are listed as having unknown authors, meaning that 4350 songs have an author listed (not always with certainty).
17643 songs have at least one book reference
4307 songs have at least one recording reference
1549 songs have at least one reference to a broadside in a major collection (Bodleian, etc.)
191 songs have at least one manuscript reference

7593 songs have been found somewhere in the United States
4430 songs have been found in Britain (2045 in England, 2601 in Scotland; in other cases, it's not clear where in Britain)
2360 have been found in Ireland (including Northern Ireland)
2076 have been found in Canada
429 have been found in Australia
402 have been found somewhere in the West Indies
265 have been found in New Zealand (though many of these New Zealand collections are dubious)

New substantial articles in this edition include:

• Ballad of Anzio: An Allied amphibious landing in Italy leaves an army to be surrounded by the Germans
  
• The Ballad of Wadi Maktilla: British troops in the desert fight their first almost-battle
  
• Bisbee: To avoid improving conditions in Arizona's copper mines, the owners deport IWW miners -- and anyone who looks non-Anglo.
  
• Cairo (I): Just whose baggage got checked on the Ohio River?
  
• The Crosspatrick: Not even the penny papers needed to make things up to describe the horror of the Cospatrickfire.
  
• From Every Stormy Wind That Blows: Oh well, at least when you die from touching the Mercy Seat, you won't know what hit you
  
• The Keweenaw Light: A marginally-traditional tale of what happened when the copper mines of the Keweenaw Peninsula shut down
  
• The Lords of Creation: What the Power of Truth has to do with the Persian Empire suppressing the Heir of King David
  
• Poor Omie (John Lewis) (Little Omie Wise) [Laws F4]. More than two hundred years after (Na)omi's death, we still don't have enough details to tell her full story
  
• Side by Side (North Africa Parody): Is there any limit to how bad Italian troops can be?
  
• Sir Hugh, or, The Jew's Daughter: Information from sources more recent (and more ancient) than Child about the Blood Libel legend
  
• The Wreck of the Northfleet: More than 300 die when their ship is hit by a steamer that flees the scene, leaving them to drown
  

Subject: RE: Tech: Ballad Index 7.2 Released
From: Nick Dow
Date: 12 Jul 26 - 07:40 AM

Excellent Bob.