The
Child Ballads are 305 traditional
ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by
Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as the 2,500-page book
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by
Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s.