This final volume of our edition of The Pepys Ballads contains many additional notes to the ballads in the first seven volumes; an index of first lines, titles, tunes, and refrains of all the ballads printed and mentioned in the preceding volumes; an index of words, proper names, and subjects. This last index is very full so that anyone working on the history and literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is practically sure to find references that will help him.

The eighty-six ballads in this sixth volume of The Pepys Ballads begin auspiciously with a jovial health sung by “the merry, loyal boys of Suffolk” after the failure of the Jacobite invasion-plot on January 3, 1691, and end appropriately with a song of triumph on the sanguinary but indecisive battle of Landen on July 19, 1693. Though most of the ballads are of an historical nature, giving a picturesque and an entertaining account of many events of importance at home, in Ireland, and on the Continent, there is no dearth of other subjects, such as prodigies, murders, hangings, and robberies. The result, as before, is a startlingly realistic picture of English life at the close of the seventeenth century.

The ninety ballads contained in this installment of Hyder Rollins’s edition of The Pepys Ballads cover the stirring events of the six or seven months after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. As before, the subjects are mainly journalistic and historical. Among the various events we find the arrival of the Princess Mary of Orange at London, the proclaiming and the coronation of William and Mary, the death of Lord Jeffreys, the flight of Father Edward Petre and other Jesuits. Other ballads deal with military affairs in Scotland and Ireland, going into considerable detail about the battle of Killiecrankie and the siege and relief of Londonderry. Full introductory notes and numerous wood-cuts add to the reader’s pleasure.

Only brief selections have previously been printed from the great ballad collection of the famous diarist Samuel Pepys, which accordingly is almost unknown except to a few students. In the present edition six volumes will be devoted to a complete reprint, with full explanatory introductions and notes of all the hitherto unprinted topical and historical ballads (1535-1702) in the collection. These first two volumes make accessible all the early ballads (1535-1640) that have not been printed elsewhere, and offer much interesting material to students of English literature, Elizabethan drama, and English history. So far as poetry is concerned, these two volumes have not been equalled by any similar collection of broadside ballads. Among the poets represented are Martin Parker George Wither, Richard Barnfield, William Basse, and Sir Edward Dyer.