List of folk songs by Roud number

This is a list of songs by their Roud Folk Song Index number. In recent years, some publishers have added Roud numbers to books and liner notes, as previously has been done with Child Ballad numbers and Laws numbers. This list (like the article List of the Child Ballads) also serves as a link to articles about the songs, which may use a very different song title.

The songs are listed in the Index by accession number, rather than (for example) by subject-matter or in order of importance. Some well-known songs have low Roud numbers (for example, many of the Child Ballads); but others have high ones.

Some of the songs were also included in the collection Jacobite Reliques by Scottish poet and novelist James Hogg.

The index is a database of nearly 200,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud, a former librarian in the London Borough of Croydon. The English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS) listed 187,800 records in the growing Folksong database as at October 2012 (which total includes all of the songs in the Broadside database that have 'traditional' origins).

The purpose of the index is to give each song a unique identifying number. The numbers were assigned on a more or less arbitrary basis, and are not intended to carry any significance in themselves. However, because of the practicalities of compiling the index (building on previously published sources) it is true as a general rule that older and better-known songs tend to occupy low numbers, while songs which are obscure have higher numbers. Closely related songs are grouped under the same Roud number. If a trusted authority gives the name of a song but not the words it is assigned Roud number 000.

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