The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads begins where Francis Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads leaves off. Bronson has collected all available tunes for each of Child's ballads, annotated and organized them, with notes describing the history and development of each tune and tune family. This is an indispensable text for ballad scholars, performers, and students of the ballad tradition.

With this volume, incorporating Ballads 244-305, Bertrand Harris Bronson completes his epic task of providing the musical counterpart to Francis James Child's collection of English and Scottish ballads. As in the previous volumes, the texts are linked with their proper traditional tunes, systematically ordered and grouped to show melodic kinship and characteristic variations developed during the course of oral transmission. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.