"Sweet Polly Oliver" is an English broadside ballad (Roud #367), traceable from 1840 or earlier. It is also known as "Pretty Polly Oliver" and has several variant sets of lyrics, set to a single anonymous melody.
It is one of the best known of a number of folk songs describing women disguising themselves as men to join the army to be with their lovers.
Thomas Root wrote a symphonic band arrangement and Benjamin Britten wrote an arrangement for voice and piano.
Reynardine is a traditional English ballad. In the versions most commonly sung and recorded today, Reynardine is a werefox who attracts beautiful women so that he can take them away to his castle. What fate meets them there is usually left ambiguous.
Lovely Joan is a traditional English folk song/ballad, and the tune to which it is sung. Its melody was used as the counterpoint tune used in British composer Ralph Greaves's arrangement of Fantasia on "Greensleeves" from Ralph Vaughan Williams's opera Sir John in Love.
"Matty Groves", also known as "Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard" or "Little Musgrave", is a ballad probably originating in Northern England that describes an adulterous tryst between a young man and a noblewoman that is ended when the woman's husband discovers and kills them. It is listed as Child ballad number 81 and number 52 in the Roud Folk Song Index. This song exists in many textual variants and has several variant names. The song dates to at least 1613, and under the title Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard is one of the Child ballads collected by 19th-century American scholar Francis James Child.
"The Unquiet Grave" is an Irish / English folk song in which a young man's grief over the death of his true love is so deep that it disturbs her eternal sleep. It was collected in 1868 by Francis James Child as Child Ballad number 78. One of the more common tunes used for the ballad is the same as that used for the English ballad "Dives and Lazarus" and the Irish pub favorite "Star of the County Down".
The Bonnie Lass o' Fyvie is a Scottish folk song about a thwarted romance between a soldier and a woman. Like many folk songs, the authorship is unattributed, there is no strict version of the lyrics, and it is often referred to by its opening line "There once was a troop o' Irish dragoons". The song is also known by a variety of other names, the most common of them being "Peggy-O", "Fennario", and "The Maid of Fife".
"Pretty Polly", "The Gosport Tragedy" or "The Cruel Ship's Carpenter" is a traditional English-language folk song found in the British Isles, Canada, and the Appalachian region of North America, among other places.
"Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" is the English common name representative of a very large class of European ballads.
"Fair Margaret and Sweet William" is a traditional English ballad which tells of two lovers, one or both of whom die from heartbreak. Thomas Percy included it in his 1765 Reliques and said that it was quoted as early as 1611 in the Knight of the Burning Pestle. In the United States, variations of Fair Margaret were regarded as folk song as early as 1823.
"The Broomfield Hill", "The Broomfield Wager" "The Merry Broomfield", "The Green Broomfield", "A Wager, a Wager", or "The West Country Wager" (Child 43, Roud 34) is a traditional English folk ballad.
Sir James the Rose is Child ballad 213. It was published as a broadside ballad.
"Canada-I-O" is a traditional English folk ballad. It is believed to have been written before 1839.
The Suffolk Miracle is Child ballad 272 and is listed as #246 in the Roud Folk Song Index. Versions of the ballad have been collected from traditional singers in England, Ireland and North America. The song is also known as "The Holland Handkerchief" and sometimes as "The Lover's Ghost".
"The Dowie Dens o Yarrow", also known as "The Braes of Yarrow" or simply "Yarrow", is a Scottish border ballad. It has many variants and it has been printed as a broadside, as well as published in song collections. It is considered to be a folk standard, and many different singers have performed and recorded it.
"The Cuckoo" is a traditional English folk song, also sung in the United States, Canada, Scotland and Ireland. The song is known by many names, including "The Coo-Coo", "The Coo-Coo Bird", "The Cuckoo Bird", "The Cuckoo Is a Pretty Bird", "The Evening Meeting", "The Unconstant Lover", "Bunclody" and "Going to Georgia". In the United States, the song is sometimes syncretized with the other traditional folk song "Jack of Diamonds". Lyrics usually include the line : "The cuckoo is a pretty bird, she sings as she flies; she brings us glad tidings, and she tells us no lies."
"One Morning in May" is an English folk song which has been collected from traditional singers in England and the USA and has also been recorded by revival singers. Through the use of double-entendre, at least in the English versions, it tells of an encounter between a grenadier and a lady.
The Bold Fisherman is an English folk song popular with traditional singers and widely collected in the early and mid 20th century CE. It has been frequently performed and recorded by contemporary folk singers and groups.
The Lark in the Morning is an English folk song. It was moderately popular with traditional singers in England, less so in Scotland, Ireland and the United States. It starts as a hymn to the ploughboy's life, and often goes on to recount a sexual encounter between a ploughboy and a maiden resulting in pregnancy.
The Golden Glove is an English folk song also popular in Scotland, Ireland and North America. It tells the tale of a young woman who falls in love with a farmer and devises a somewhat far-fetched ruse to win his love. This song is also known as Dog and Gun and The Squire of Tamworth
The Banks of Sweet Dundee is a folk song very popular with and frequently collected from traditional singers in Britain and Ireland, fairly common in North America, and also performed by revival singers and groups. A young woman escapes a forced marriage by shooting dead both the squire who is her intended husband and her uncle who attacks her.
"Early, Early in the Spring" is a British folk song that has been collected from traditional singers in England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and the United States. It tells the story of a sailor gone to sea whose beloved promises to wait for him. When he returns she has married a rich man and he goes back to sea with a broken heart and a bitter attitude. In a few American versions the betrayed lover is a cowboy.
The main theme of Terry Pratchett’s book, Monstrous Regiment , in which a young woman named Polly, who has heard the song sung in her father's inn, joins the army, as a man, to find her brother, taking the name Oliver.
Several versions of "Polly Oliver" survive as undated broadside ballad sheets in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.