Roud Folk Song Index

The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 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. He was also Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society.

The primary function of the Roud Folk Song Index is as a research aid that correlates versions of traditional English-language folk song lyrics that have been independently documented over past centuries by many different collectors across (especially) the UK and North America. It is possible by searching the database, for example by title, by first line(s), or subject matter (or a combination of any of a dozen fields) to locate each of the often numerous variants of a particular song.

The purpose of the index is to give each song a unique identifier. 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.