List of folk songs by Roud number
This is a list of songs by their Roud Folk Song Index numbers; the full catalogue can also be found on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website. Some publishers have added Roud numbers to books and liner notes, as has also been done with Child Ballad numbers and Laws numbers. This list also serves as a link to articles about the songs, which may use a very different song title.
Imagem: JOHN K THORNE · CC0 · Openverse
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.
