A Lost Ballad Found: “A Lamentable Songe of the Daugtor of Iephtha” (ca. 1567–1568)

Abstract: This article introduces and presents a transcription of a previously unnoticed Elizabethan Jephthah ballad. It survives in a sixteenth-century manuscript copy in Cambridge, University Library, Norton.b.4, a Lyon 1517 edition of Sallust’s Opera . The ballad is striking partly as the only early modern English text to approach Judges 11 solely through the perspective of Jephthah’s daughter. The ballad is also striking because of how it has been preserved in Norton.b.4: English and Latin, classics and Old Testament history, and popular culture and Tudor pedagogy collide in this book. Norton.b.4’s Jephthah ballad presents new evidence for the extent to which early modern ballads could traverse elite and popular culture, appealing to varied social groups.