Not necissarily a ballad but a fine example of the fact that..
So essentially it is a form of narrative and dramatic poetry.
The original ballads originated from medieval europe.In theme and function they may originate from Scandinavian and Germanic traditions of epic storytelling that can be seen in poems such as Beowulf. The earliest example we have of a recognisable ballad in form in England is ‘Judas’ in a thirteenth century manuscript
Minstrels were the original delivery system for the ballad itself. Typically playing to the commoners. They would tell EPIC tales in there songs. The traditional, classical or popular (meaning of the people) ballad has been seen as originating with the wandering minstrels of late medieval Europe.[1] From the end of the fifteenth century we have printed ballads that suggest a rich tradition of popular music. We know from a reference in William Langland's Piers Plowman, that ballads about Robin Hood were being sung from at least the late fourteenth century and the oldest detailed material we have is Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495.[9]
Scholars are often divided into two camps on how traditional ballads were written.
argue that ballads arose by a combined communal effort and did not have a single author, and ‘individualists’, following the thinking of English collector Cecil Sharp, who assert that there was a single original author.
The Brother’s Grimm for those who do not know were German academics who were best known for publishing collections of folk tales and fairy tales and for their work in linguistics, relating to how the sounds in words shift over time (Grimm's Law)
The communalist position tends to lead to the view that more recent, particularly printed broadside ballads, where we may even know the author, are a debased form of the genre.
The traditional, classical or popular (meaning of the people) ballad has been seen as originating with the wandering minstrels of late medieval Europe.[1] From the end of the fifteenth century we have printed ballads that suggest a rich tradition of popular music. We know from a reference in William Langland's Piers Plowman, that ballads about Robin Hood were being sung from at least the late fourteenth century and the oldest detailed material we have is Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495.[9]
Early collections of ballads were made by Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) and in the Roxburghe Ballads collected by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (1661-1724).[9] In the eighteenth century there were increasing numbers such collections, including Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719-20) and Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765).[9] The last of these also contained some oral material and by the end of the eighteenth century this was becoming increasingly common, with collections including John Ritson's, The Bishopric Garland (1784), which paralleled the work of figures like Robert Burns and Walter Scott in Scotland.[9]
Key work on the traditional ballad was undertaken in the late nineteenth century in Denmark by Svend Grundtvig and for England and Scotland by the Harvard professor Francis Child.[10] They attempted to record and classify all the known ballads and variants in their chosen regions. Unfortunately since Child died before writing a commentary on his work it is uncertain exactly how and why he differentiated the 305 ballads printed that would be published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.[11]
a folk song known in dozens of versions. It has been classified as Child Ballad 84. (Roud 54) The author is unknown, but the song may have originated in England, Ireland or Scotland. The earliest known mention of the song is in Samuel Pepys' diary[1] for January 2. 1666 (ed. Robert Latham & William Matthews, Vol. vii, London: [1972], p. 1.) where he refers to the \"little Scotch song of 'Barbary Allen'\".
Key work on the traditional ballad was undertaken in the late nineteenth century in Denmark by Svend Grundtvig and for England and Scotland by the Harvard professor Francis Child.[10] They attempted to record and classify all the known ballads and variants in their chosen regions. Unfortunately since Child died before writing a commentary on his work it is uncertain exactly how and why he differentiated the 305 ballads printed that would be published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.[11]
There have been many different and contradictory attempts to classify traditional ballads by theme, but commonly identified types are the religious, supernatural, tragic, love ballads, historic, legendary and humorous.[1]
There have been many different and contradictory attempts to classify traditional ballads by theme,
but commonly identified types are the religious, supernatural, tragic, love ballads, historic, legendary and humorous.[1]
Broadside ballads (also known as 'roadsheet’, ‘stall’, ‘vulgar’ or ‘come all ye’ ballads) were a product of the development of cheap print from the sixteenth century. They were generally printed on one side of a large sheet of poor quality paper. This could also be cut in half lengthways to make ‘broadslips’, or folded to make chapbooks.[12] They were produced in huge numbers, with over 400,000 being sold in England annually by the 1660s.[13] Many were sold by travelling chapmen in city streets or at fairs.[14] The subject matter varied from what has been defined as the traditional ballad, although many traditional ballads were printed as broadsides. Among the topics were love, religion, drinking-songs, legends, and early journalism, which included disasters, political events and signs, wonders and prodigies.[15]
Literary or lyrical ballads grew out of an increasing interest in the ballad form among social elites and intellectuals, particularly in the Romantic movement from the later eighteenth century. Respected literary figures like Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott in Scotland both collected and wrote their own ballads, using the form to create an artistic product. Similarly in England William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced a collection of Lyrical Ballads in 1798, including Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. At the same time in Germany Goethe cooperated with Schiller on a series of ballads, some of which were later set to music by Schubert.[16] Later important examples of the poetic form included Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Barrack Room Ballads’ (1892-6) and Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ (1897).[17]
Some 300 ballads sung in north America have been identified as having origins in British traditional or broadside ballads.[26] Examples include ‘The Streets of Laredo’, which was found in Britain and Ireland as ‘The Unfortunate Rake’. However, a further 400 have been identified as originating in colonial north America, including among the best known, ‘The Ballad of Davy Crockett' and 'Jesse James'.[26] They became an increasing area of interest for scholars in the nineteenth century and most were recorded or catalogued by George Malcolm Laws, although some have since been found to have British origins and additional songs have since been collected.[26] They are usually considered closest in form to British broadside ballads and in terms of style are largely indistinguishable, however, they demonstrate a particular concern with occupations, journalistic style and often lack the ribaldry of British broadside ballads.[27]
The blues ballad has been seen as a fusion of Anglo-American and Afro-American styles of music from the nineteenth century. Blues ballads tend to deal with active protagonists, often anti-heroes, resisting adversity and authority, but frequently lacking a strong narrative and emphasising character over narrative.[26] They were often accompanied by banjo and guitar which followed the blues musical format.[28] The most famous blues ballads include John Henry and Casey Jones.[26]
The ballad was taken to Australia by early settlers from Britain and Ireland and gained particular foothold in the rural outback. The rhyming songs, poems and tales written in the form of ballads often relate to the itinerant and rebellious spirit of Australia in The Bush, and the authors and performers are often referred to as bush bards.[29] The nineteenth century was the golden age of bush ballads. Several collectors have catalogued the songs including John Meredith whose recording in the 1950s became the basis of the collection in the National Library of Australia.[30] The songs tell personal stories of life in the wide open country of Australia. Typical subjects include mining, raising and droving cattle, sheep shearing, wanderings, war stories, the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, class conflicts between the landless working class and the squatters (landowners), and outlaws such as Ned Kelly, as well as love interests and more modern fare such as trucking.[31]
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In the second half of the twentieth century the term \"ballad\" took on the meaning of a popular or jazz song especially of a romantic or sentimental nature, and was often contrasted with up-tempo pop songs.[32] From the 1970s the power ballad was developed by rock bands as an emotional song, generally focused on love , delivered with powerful vocals and using rock instruments, particularly electric guitars and drums. Examples include Heart’s ‘What about love’ (1985).[33]
Some ballads, especially older traditional ballads, were composed for audiences of non-specialist hearers or (later) readers. Therefore, they feature language that people can understand without specialist training or repeated readings. When later poets choose to write ballads, regardless of their intended audience, the choice of the ballad form generally implies a similar emphasis on simple language. Sometimes poets write ballads specifically to react against poetry they see as overly intellectual or obscure.
Ballads tend to be narrative poems, poems that tell stories, as opposed to lyric poems, which emphasize the emotions of the speaker.
The traditional ballad stanza consists of four lines, rhymed abcb (or sometimes abab--the key is that the second and fourth lines rhyme).
A variation of Common Meter.
Like common metre, it has stanzas of four iambic lines. The difference is that ballad metre is \"less regular and more conversational\"[2] than common metre, and does not necessarily rhyme both sets of lines. Only the second and fourth lines must rhyme in ballad metre, in the pattern a-b-x-b.
A ballad often has a refrain, a repeated section that divides segments of the story. Many ballads also employ incremental repetition, in which a phrase recurs with minor differences as the story progresses.
Reading Lord Randal
As you might expect in a narrative genre, ballads often incorporate multiple characters into their stories. Often, since changes of voice were communicated orally, written transcriptions of oral ballads give little or no indication that the speaker has changed. Writers of literary ballads, the later poems that imitate oral ballads, sometimes play with this convention.
Reading Ballad of Birmingham.
Ballad narrators usually do not speak in the first person (unless speaking as a character in the story), and they often do not comment on their reactions to the emotional content of the ballad.
