To describe a ballad as a "Child ballad" is to immediately authenticate its bona fides. Both the original five-volume set, published in ten-parts, and later reprints from the mid-twentieth century, are long out of print, and are occasionally available from booksellers at high cost. Available online versions of the books are often formatted poorly and searching for text is difficult or impossible.

This seminal work is now available as a zipped download for Mac or PC. Designed to be especially useful for scholars, educators, singers, and enthusiast, it's a comprehensive, digitally searchable and printable version. Individual ballads - or indeed the entire 2,800+ plus-page collection - can be printed out. Looking up unfamiliar words is easy using built-in hyperlinks between lyrics and glossary. The Gazetteer supplies the geographic location of places mentioned in the ballads with brief historic notes, and is cross-referenced to both the ballad texts and newly developed maps. Additional images, commentary, music tracks, and other enhanced content are being made available on this Heritage Muse Publishing website.

• Alphabetical Ballad Locator Index brings all references to each ballad together in one list.
• Hyperlinked margin boxes offering easy access to all of the Additions & Corrections and additional lyric variants throughout the ten parts
• Critically placed Comment Boxes showing both the main texts as originally printed and the "Corrections to the Print" referenced in later parts
• Place names found in the ballad texts are linked directly to the new Gazetteer and maps
• Two-way hyperlinks between:

Master Table of Contents => Ballad Texts

Ballad text => Glossary

Ballad text <=> Gazeteer <=> Maps

Ballad text <=> Child's "Additions and Corrections for each ballad

Ballad text <=> Child's music annotations => playable sound files

Indexes => Ballad texts and notes

Each work in The Heritage Collectors digital library contains a set of new, interactive maps in PDF format. Placenames on the maps are color coded (RED) to show locations mentioned in the ballad and song texts of the related collection. All of these place names are linked to the accompanying gazetteer and from the gazetteer directly to the lyric texts. Several locations on each map are further marked as having photographs or illustrations attached and viewable.

Although optimized for 8.5"x11" or 18"x24" printouts, map views can be zoomed out as small as 8.33% and zoomed in as large as 800%. Every map has a comprehensive set of bookmarks for quick navigation to any locale.

The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (digital edition includes interactive maps of the British Islands,England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the North Atlantic, Europe and the Mediterranean, historic London, and historic Edinburgh.

The Gazetteer lists and locates all of the placenames found in the ballad texts. Brief notes illuminate each citation. The ballad texts and the maps are all interlinked through the Gazetteer.