Ballad
A ballad is a narrative poem or song that tells a story, often focusing on themes of love, tragedy, or adventure. Ballads typically have a simple and repetitive structure, making them easy to remember and perform orally. They are known for their emotional impact and have been a popular form of storytelling in many cultures throughout history.
5 Key excerpts on "Ballad"
eBook - ePub- Peter Childs, Roger Fowler, Peter Childs, Roger Fowler(Authors)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...B Ballad The term has three meanings of different scope. The widest is that of any set of words for a tune. The narrowest refers to the English and Scottish traditional Ballad, a specific form of narrative poem which became a part of the larger world of folk song. The Ballad is not peculiar to England and Scotland, but is found throughout Europe and in post-settlement America. In Britain, the traditional Ballad first appears in the later Middle Ages, probably in the fifteenth century, when the minstrels, declining in social status and circulation, began to carry to a wider audience their narrative art in folk songs based on strong symmetrically constructed stories in a simplified four-line stanza. Then Ballads were increasingly sung at every level of society by non-professionals. By the end of the seventeenth century, emphasis had shifted to the music as the prime formative constituent and more Ballads used refrains, meaningless vocables like ‘fal-lal’, common-places and formulae, ‘filler lines’ to give the singer time to arrange the next stanza, and the peculiarly effective structure known as ‘incremental repetition’: He was a braw gallant, And he rade at the ring; And the bonny Earl of Murray Oh he might have been a king! He was a braw gallant And he played at the ba; And the bonny Earl of Murray Was the flower among them a’. The traditional Ballads as a whole have certain well-marked characteristics. They deal with episodes of well-known stories, condensed and impersonally presented, often by means of juxtaposed pictures or direct speech of the persons involved: The king sits in Dunfermline town Drinking the blude-red wine; ‘O whare will I get a skeely skipper To sail this new ship o’ mine?’. . . Our king has written a braid letter, And seal’d it with his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the strand. ...
eBook - ePubPoetry 101
From Shakespeare and Rupi Kaur to Iambic Pentameter and Blank Verse, Everything You Need to Know about Poetry
- Susan Dalzell(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Adams Media(Publisher)
...BalladS Sing Me a Story Ballads possess a rich and ancient heritage, stemming back to the stories people told one another while huddled around the kitchen fire or gathered for a wedding or feast. While epics may recount a hero’s lengthy adventures, a Ballad is more succinct. It can be told, or better yet, sung in a matter of a few minutes. Ballads are a European folk tradition and were probably spread by traveling minstrels during the Middle Ages. WHAT IS A Ballad? The definition of a Ballad is not all that precise. It’s essentially a story poem told with short stanzas. Ballad Characteristics • The words Ballad and ballet are both derived from the Latin verb for dance: ballare. Ballads may have begun as accompaniments to folk dancing. • Ballads are narrative poems. They are stories with plots. • Ballads can be written on a variety of topics, including love, religion, politics, and death. • Repetition is common in Ballads. A refrain may be repeated after every other stanza. Or, the wording with each repetition may change slightly to give the meaning a twist. • Ballad style isn’t rigid, but a popular format features four-line stanzas with alternating lines rhyming. It is also common to have the alternating lines have four and three beats for the rhythm. Ballade with an “E” But wait—there’s more. There’s also a Ballade—with an “e.” That’s a little different, although related. Ballades were sung by French court poets in the fourteenth century. Chaucer was the first to try it in English: his poems “To Rosemounde” and “Balade de Bon Conseil” were written as Ballades. A few other poets in the fifteenth century imitated Chaucer but the style fell out of favor until the nineteenth century. Ballades are brief, only three stanzas connected by a refrain and shared rhymes. COLLECTING AND CATALOGUING The earliest English example of a Ballad is found in the British Library...
eBook - ePub- Alan Bold(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Ironically, then, the traditional Ballad takes its name from the despised broadside that is held to be so inferior to it. Admittedly the qualitative difference between popular and broadside Ballads is immense. The broadsides were urban artefacts that aimed at permanence and proved ephemeral; the popular Ballads were produced for the folk and possessed by them. Mrs Hogg, the mother of the Ettrick Shepherd, provided Sir Walter Scott with invaluable material and later told him that print had a destructive effect on the Ballads: There war never ane o’ my sangs prentit till ye prentit them yoursel’, an’ ye hae spoilt them awthegither. They were made for singing an’ no for reading; but ye hae broken the charm now, an’ they’ll never be sung mair. (James Hogg, Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott (1834), p. 61) They were made for singing: that is the modern conception of the popular Ballad. It is a narrative song whose metrical structure conforms to the exigencies of memorability. Because the popular Ballads had an oral currency they had to be memorable, and all the stylistic features we associate with Balladry can be explained by the fact that to survive they had to be unforgettable. The simple rhymes, the incremental reputations, the obligatory epithets, the magical numbers, the nuncupative testaments, the commonplace phrases, the reliance on dialogue, the dramatic nature of the narrative: these make the Ballad easier to remember, easier to memorize. The unique style of the Ballads derives from its oral nature. Literary poetry, written for the page, depends on the unexpected phrase, the ingenious rhyme, the contrived figure of speech. Literary poets like to innovate; oral poets must depend on formulas. Those Ballads at the beginning of Child’s collection have a large number of Continental analogues, and it was surely in response to a European stock of stories that the English and Scottish Ballads first evolved their unmistakable style...
eBook - ePub- George Ticknor(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Perlego(Publisher)
...But though we may not be able to make out an exact arrangement or a detailed history of what was necessarily so free and always so little watched, it can still be distributed into four different classes, and will afford tolerable materials for a notice of its progress and condition under each. These four classes are, first, the Ballads, or the poetry, both narrative and lyrical, of the common people, from the earliest times; second, the Chronicles, or the half-genuine, half-fabulous histories of the great events and heroes of the national annals, which, though originally begun by authority of the state, were always deeply imbued with the popular feelings and character; third, the Romances of Chivalry, intimately connected with both the others, and, after a time, as passionately admired as either by the whole nation; and, fourth, the Drama, which, in its origin, has always been a popular and religious amusement, and was hardly less so in Spain than it was in Greece or in France. These four classes compose what was generally most valued in Spanish literature during the latter part of the fourteenth century, the whole of the fifteenth, and much of the sixteenth. They rested on the deep foundations of the national character, and therefore, by their very nature, were opposed to the Provençal, the Italian, and the courtly schools, which flourished during the same period, and which will be subsequently examined. The Ballads. —We begin with the Ballads, because it cannot reasonably be doubted that poetry, in the present Spanish language, appeared earliest in the Ballad form. And the first question that occurs in relation to them is the obvious one, why this was the case...
eBook - ePub- Christopher R. Wilson(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
...Folk songs and popular Ballads are a non-notational kind, transmitted aurally among and between generations. Street songs and Ballads can encompass folk songs but generally indicate printed street or broadside Ballads, especially in demand in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. 185 They represent the commercial arm of popular music and raise questions about production and intended audience, equivalent to some extent to debates about what motivates and defines popular music in modern culture. ‘Is modern popular music’, asks Hansen (2010: 26), ‘made by or made for “the people”, generated from mass populations or sold to them?’ He cites Richard Middleton 186 who argues that, according to Hansen, ‘as a far from “pure” product of and response to the subjections generated by the economic and cultural “machinery” of modernity, popular music is “the voice of the people” and therefore “always plural, hybrid, compromised”’. In certain contexts, or perhaps more generally, this represents a challenge to the establishment, to authority. As a reflection on political, social and cultural tenets, as Hansen (2010: 26) puts it, ‘popular music past and present has been seen in terms of how it “supports or disrupts the dominant ideology”’. Popular music can both critique and challenge the other world to which it does not belong but which cannot ignore it. Autolycus’ Ballads, for example, in the second half of The Winter’s Tale, work as both social identifier for actor and audience, and as cultural and political opposition to the court with its stilted mores and outward manifestations. Performed popular songs and dances in Shakespeare’s plays more often take on the role of ‘called-for’ music than snatches and allusions to well-known tunes and sources. In which case, a text citing all or part of the song is usually provided, not necessarily by Shakespeare. Allusions to songs generally refer only to a title or memorable words and are invariably popular songs...
