The Roud Broadside Index
The Broadside Index is a catch-all database designed to help with historical research into traditional and popular songs. It can be used in conjunction with its companion database the Folk Song Index, or on its own.
The Broadside Index includes references to songs which appeared on broadsides, chapbooks, songsters, and other cheap print publications, up to about 1920. In addition, there are many entries for music hall songs, pre second world war radio performers’ song folios, sheet music, and so on. In indexing terms, it is necessarily very messy. It has no well-defined parameters, nor cut-off dates, and is offered merely as a finding aid and not a definitive catalogue.
For each song, the 'Song title' and 'First line' are given (if known), and the 'Tune' field gives the name of the tune, if given in the original; the 'Type' field explains whether it is a broadside, chapbook, songster, printer’s catalogue, etc., which is being indexed. The 'Broadside printer' field gives the imprint or bibliographic data, and the 'Location' field indicates where a copy can be located. Author’s name, if known, is included in the 'Notes 2' field.
The 'Roud num' field links the Broadside Index to the Folk Song Index. Songs which have been collected from traditional singers (i.e. 'folk songs') are given Roud numbers to help distinguish one from another. When these songs appear on broadsides and other cheap printed materials, the number is recorded in the database to help with research, and the entries which refer to broadsides, etc., are duplicated in the Folk Song Index.
Songs which have not been found in the tradition do not have Roud numbers.
