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"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.
A Farewell to Arms is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, set during the Italian campaign of World War I. First published in 1929, it is a first-person account of an American, Frederic Henry, serving as a lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army. The novel describes a love affair between the expatriate from America and an English nurse, Catherine Barkley.
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 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 girl. 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.
"Fair Margaret and Sweet William" is a traditional English ballad which tells of two lovers, of whom either one or both die from heartbreak. Thomas Percy included it in his folio 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 have been 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.
The Noble Fisherman, also known as Robin Hood's Preferment and Robin Hood's Fishing, is a 17th-century ballad of Robin Hood. Unusually, it depicts Robin Hood as a hero of the sea, rather than his usual portrayal as someone who operated in the greenwood forest. It seems to have been quite popular for the first two centuries of its existence, although it eventually lost prominence and was less used in adaptations of Robin Hood from the 19th and 20th centuries. It was later published by Francis James Child in the 1880s as Child Ballad #148 in his influential collection of popular ballads.
Sir James the Rose is Child ballad 213. It was published as a broadside ballad.
"Tug of War" is the fifth episode of the fourth series of the television period drama Upstairs, Downstairs. It first aired on 12 October 1974 on ITV.
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". 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."
Blackout and All Clear are the two volumes that constitute a 2010 science fiction novel by American author Connie Willis. Blackout was published February 2, 2010 by Spectra. The second part, the conclusion All Clear, was released as a separate book on October 19, 2010. The diptych won the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2011 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and the 2011 Hugo Award for Best Novel. These two volumes are the most recent of four books and a short story that Willis has written involving time travel from Oxford during the mid-21st century, all of which won multiple awards.
"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.
Flight Nurse is a 1953 American drama war film directed by Allan Dwan and stars Joan Leslie and Forrest Tucker. The film is largely based on the life of Lillian Kinkella Keil, one of the most decorated women in American military history. Flight Nurse begins with the dedication: "This picture is respectfully dedicated to that brave legion of military nurses who are serving with the armed forces of free nations all over the world. These angels of mercy – shoulder to shoulder, share the danger and hardships of free fighting men everywhere, with devotion above and beyond the call of duty."
Transportation ballads are a genre of broadside ballad some of which became an important part of the folk song traditions of Britain and Ireland. They concern the transportation of convicted criminals firstly to the American colonies and then to penal colonies in Australia. Transportation ballads were published as broadsides,. Many have passed into the folk tradition and have been collected subsequently from traditional singers.
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.
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.
