![The-Twa-Corbies](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/The-Twa-Corbies.jpg)
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''
ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Britain and Ireland from the
Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in Australia, North Africa, North America and South America. Ballads are often 13 lines with an ABABBCBC form, consisting of couplets (two lines) of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. Another common form is ABAB or ABCB repeated, in alternating eight and six syllable lines.
Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet
broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century, the term took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and is often used for any love song, particularly the
sentimental ballad of pop or rock music, although the term is also associated with the concept of a stylized storytelling song or poem, particularly when used as a title for other media such as a film.
Origins
![Here begynneth a gest of Robyn Hode](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Here_begynneth_a_gest_of_Robyn_Hode.png)
A ballad is a form of verse, often a
narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller (ge ...
set to
music
Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...
. Ballads derive from the medieval
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
''chanson balladée'' or ''
ballade'', which were originally "dancing songs" (
L: ''ballare'', to dance), yet becoming "stylized forms of solo song" before being adopted in England. As a narrative song, their theme and function may originate from
Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion#Europe, subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, ...
n and
Germanic traditions of storytelling that can be seen in poems such as ''
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, BÄ“owulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
''.
[J. E. Housman, ''British Popular Ballads'' (1952, London: Ayer Publishing, 1969), p. 15.] Musically they were influenced by the Minnelieder of the
Minnesang tradition. The earliest example of a recognizable ballad in form in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
is "
Judas" in a 13th-century
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...
.
[A. N. Bold, ''The Ballad'' (Routledge, 1979), p. 5.]
Ballad form
Ballads were originally written to accompany dances, and so were composed in
couplets
A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (or closed) couplet, each of the ...
with refrains in alternate lines. These refrains would have been sung by the dancers in time with the dance.
["Popular Ballads", ''The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century'', p. 610.] Most northern and west European ballads are written in
ballad stanzas or
quatrains (four-line
stanzas
In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, but they are not required to have eithe ...
) of alternating lines of
iambic (an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable)
tetrameter
In poetry, a tetrameter is a line of four metrical feet. The particular foot can vary, as follows:
* ''Anapestic tetrameter:''
** "And the ''sheen'' of their ''spears'' was like ''stars'' on the ''sea''" (Lord Byron, "The Destruction of Sennacher ...
(eight syllables) and iambic
trimeter
In poetry, a trimeter (Greek for "three measure") is a metre of three metrical feet per line. Examples:
: When here // the spring // we see,
: Fresh green // upon // the tree.
See also
* Anapaest
* Dactyl
* Tristich
* Triadic-line poetry Triad ...
(six syllables), known as
ballad meter Common metre or common measure—abbreviated as C. M. or CM—is a poetic metre consisting of four lines that alternate between iambic tetrameter (four metrical feet per line) and iambic trimeter (three metrical feet per line), with each foot cons ...
. Usually, only the second and fourth line of a quatrain are rhymed (in the scheme a, b, c, b), which has been taken to suggest that, originally, ballads consisted of couplets (two lines) of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables.
[D. Head and I. Ousby, ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 66.] This can be seen in this stanza from "
Lord Thomas and Fair Annet
Lord Thomas and Fair Annet (), also known as Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor, is an English folk ballad.
Synopsis
Lord Thomas (or Sweet Willie) is in love with Fair Annet, or Annie, or Elinor, but she has little property. He asks for advice. His ...
":
The horse , fair Ann , et rode , upon ,
He amb , led like , the wind , ,
With sil , ver he , was shod , before,
With burn , ing gold , behind , .
[
There is considerable variation on this pattern in almost every respect, including length, number of lines and rhyming scheme, making the strict definition of a ballad extremely difficult. In southern and eastern Europe, and in countries that derive their tradition from them, ballad structure differs significantly, like Spanish ''romanceros'', which are ]octosyllabic The octosyllable or octosyllabic verse is a line of verse with eight syllables. It is equivalent to tetrameter verse in trochees in languages with a stress accent. Its first occurrence is in a 10th-century Old French saint's legend, the '' Vie de ...
and use consonance rather than rhyme.
Ballads usually are heavily influenced by the regions in which they originate and use the common dialect of the people. Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
's ballads in particular, both in theme and language, are strongly characterised by their distinctive tradition, even exhibiting some pre-Christian influences in the inclusion of supernatural elements such as travel to the Fairy
A fairy (also fay, fae, fey, fair folk, or faerie) is a type of mythical being or legendary creature found in the folklore of multiple European cultures (including Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore), a form of spirit, ...
Kingdom in the Scots ballad "Tam Lin". The ballads do not have any known author or correct version; instead, having been passed down mainly by oral tradition since the Middle Ages, there are many variations of each. The ballads remained an oral tradition until the increased interest in folk songs in the 18th century led collectors such as Bishop Thomas Percy (1729–1811) to publish volumes of popular ballads.
In all traditions most ballads are narrative in nature, with a self-contained story, often concise, and rely on imagery, rather than description, which can be tragic, historical, romantic or comic. Themes concerning rural labourers and their sexuality are common, and there are many ballads based on the Robin Hood legend. Another common feature of ballads is repetition, sometimes of fourth lines in succeeding stanzas, as a refrain
A refrain (from Vulgar Latin ''refringere'', "to repeat", and later from Old French ''refraindre'') is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in poetry — the "chorus" of a song. Poetic fixed forms that feature refrains include the vi ...
, sometimes of third and fourth lines of a stanza and sometimes of entire stanzas.[
]
Composition
Scholars of ballads have been divided into "communalists", such as Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried von Herder ( , ; 25 August 174418 December 1803) was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the Enlightenment, ''Sturm und Drang'', and Weimar Classicism.
Biography
Born in Mohrun ...
(1744–1803) and the Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among the ...
, who argue that ballads are originally communal compositions, and "individualists" such as Cecil Sharp, who assert that there was one single original author. Communalists tend to see more recent, particularly printed, broadside ballads of known authorship as a debased form of the genre, while individualists see variants as corruptions of an original text. More recently scholars have pointed to the interchange of oral and written forms of the ballad.[T. A. Green, ''Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art'' (ABC-CLIO, 1997), p. 353.]
Transmission
The transmission of ballads comprises a key stage in their re-composition. In romantic terms this process is often dramatized as a narrative of degeneration away from the pure 'folk memory' or 'immemorial tradition'. In the introduction to ''Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
''Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border'' is an anthology of Border ballads, together with some from north-east Scotland and a few modern literary ballads, edited by Walter Scott. It was first published in 1802, but was expanded in several later ...
'' (1802) the romantic poet and historical novelist Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'', ''Rob Roy (n ...
argued a need to 'remove obvious corruptions' in order to attempt to restore a supposed original. For Scott, the process of multiple recitations 'incurs the risk of impertinent interpolations from the conceit of one rehearser, unintelligible blunders from the stupidity of another, and omissions equally to be regretted, from the want of memory of a third.' Similarly, John Robert Moore noted 'a natural tendency to oblivescence'.
Classification
European Ballads have been generally classified into three major groups: traditional, broadside and literary. In America a distinction is drawn between ballads that are versions of European, particularly British and Irish songs, and 'Native American ballads', developed without reference to earlier songs. A further development was the evolution of the blues ballad, which mixed the genre with Afro-American music. For the late 19th century the music publishing industry found a market for what are often termed sentimental ballads, and these are the origin of the modern use of the term 'ballad' to mean a slow love song.
Traditional ballads
The traditional, classical or popular (meaning of the people) ballad has been seen as beginning with the wandering minstrels
A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who ...
of late medieval Europe.[ From the end of the 15th century there are printed ballads that suggest a rich tradition of popular music. A reference in ]William Langland
William Langland (; la, Willielmus de Langland; 1332 – c. 1386) is the presumed author of a work of Middle English alliterative verse generally known as ''Piers Plowman'', an allegory with a complex variety of religious themes. The poem tr ...
's ''Piers Plowman
''Piers Plowman'' (written 1370–86; possibly ) or ''Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman'' (''William's Vision of Piers Plowman'') is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in un-rhymed, alliterative v ...
'' indicates that ballads about Robin Hood were being sung from at least the late 14th century and the oldest detailed material is Wynkyn de Worde's collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495.[B. Sweers, ''Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 45.]
Early collections of English ballads were made by Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no mariti ...
(1633–1703) and in the Roxburghe Ballads
In 1847 John Payne Collier (1789–1883) printed ''A Book of Roxburghe Ballads''. It consisted of 1,341 broadside ballads from the seventeenth century, mostly English, originally collected by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (16 ...
collected by Robert Harley, (1661–1724), which paralleled the work in Scotland by Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'', ''Rob Roy (n ...
and Robert Burns.[ Inspired by his reading as a teenager of '']Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
The ''Reliques of Ancient English Poetry'' (sometimes known as ''Reliques of Ancient Poetry'' or simply Percy's ''Reliques'') is a collection of ballads and popular songs collected by Bishop Thomas Percy and published in 1765.
Sources
The basis ...
'' by Thomas Percy, Scott began collecting ballads while he attended Edinburgh University in the 1790s. He published his research from 1802 to 1803 in a three-volume work, ''Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
''Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border'' is an anthology of Border ballads, together with some from north-east Scotland and a few modern literary ballads, edited by Walter Scott. It was first published in 1802, but was expanded in several later ...
''. Burns collaborated with James Johnson James Johnson may refer to:
Artists, actors, authors, and musicians
*James Austin Johnson (born 1989), American comedian & actor, ''Saturday Night Live'' cast member
* James B. Johnson (born 1944), author of science nonfiction novels
*James P. Joh ...
on the multi-volume ''Scots Musical Museum
The ''Scots Musical Museum'' was an influential collection of traditional folk music of Scotland published from 1787 to 1803. While it was not the first collection of Scottish folk songs and music, the six volumes with 100 songs in each collected ...
'', a miscellany of folk songs and poetry with original work by Burns. Around the same time, he worked with George Thompson on ''A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice
''A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice'' is a multi-volume collection of Scottish song edited and published by the entrepreneurial musician, publisher and Clerk to the Board of Trustees for Encouragement of Art and Manufactur ...
''.
Both Northern English and Southern Scots shared in the identified tradition of Border ballads
Border ballads are a group of songs in the long tradition of balladry collected from the Anglo-Scottish border. Like all traditional ballads, they were traditionally sung unaccompanied. There may be a repeating motif, but there is no "chorus" as ...
, particularly evinced by the cross-border narrative in versions of "The Ballad of Chevy Chase
"The Ballad of Chevy Chase" is an English ballad, catalogued as Child Ballad 162 (Roud 223Sehere/ref>). There are two extant ballads under this title, both of which narrate the same story. As ballads existed within oral tradition before being wri ...
" sometimes associated with the Lancashire-born sixteenth-century minstrel Richard Sheale
Richard (or Rycharde) Teale, harper of Tamworth, was 16th century peddlar, and minstrel for the Stanley Family (and some say, like all pedlars, a mediocre poet).
Life
Richard (or Rycharde) Teale was a minstrel-retainer of the Earl of Der ...
.[D. Gregory, '"The Songs of the People for Me": The Victorian Rediscovery of Lancashire Vernacular Song', ''Canadian Folk Music/Musique folklorique canadienne'', 40 (2006), pp. 12-21.]
It has been suggested that the increasing interest in traditional popular ballads during the eighteenth century was prompted by social issues such as the enclosure movement as many of the ballads deal with themes concerning rural laborers. James Davey has suggested that the common themes of sailing and naval battles may also have prompted the use (at least in England) of popular ballads as naval recruitment tools.
Key work on the traditional ballad was undertaken in the late 19th century in Denmark by Svend Grundtvig
Svend Hersleb Grundtvig (9 September 1824, Copenhagen – 14 July 1883, Frederiksberg) was a Danish literary historian and ethnographer. He was one of the first systematic collectors of Danish traditional music, and he was especially interested ...
and for England and Scotland by the Harvard professor Francis James Child
Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of English and Scottish ballads now known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of r ...
. They attempted to record and classify all the known ballads and variants in their chosen regions. 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
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as ''T ...
''. 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.[ The traditional form and content of the ballad were modified to form the basis for twenty-three bawdy pornographic ballads that appeared in the underground Victorian magazine '' The Pearl'', which ran for eighteen issues between 1879 and 1880. Unlike the traditional ballad, these obscene ballads aggressively mocked sentimental nostalgia and local lore.
]
Broadsides
Broadside ballads (also known as 'broadsheet', 'stall', 'vulgar' or 'come all ye' ballads) were a product of the development of cheap print in the 16th century. They were generally printed on one side of a medium to large sheet of poor quality paper. In the first half of the 17th century, they were printed in black-letter or gothic type and included multiple, eye-catching illustrations, a popular tune title, as well as an alluring poem. By the 18th century, they were printed in white letter or roman type and often without much decoration (as well as tune title). These later sheets could include many individual songs, which would be cut apart and sold individually as "slip songs." Alternatively, they might be folded to make small cheap books or "chapbooks" which often drew on ballad stories. They were produced in huge numbers, with over 400,000 being sold in England annually by the 1660s. Tessa Watt estimates the number of copies sold may have been in the millions. Many were sold by travelling chapmen in city streets or at fairs. 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, marriage, religion, drinking-songs, legends, and early journalism, which included disasters, political events and signs, wonders and prodigies.
Literary ballads
Literary or lyrical ballads grew out of an increasing interest in the ballad form among social elites and intellectuals, particularly in the Romantic movement
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
from the later 18th century. Respected literary figures Robert Burns and Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'', ''Rob Roy (n ...
in Scotland collected and wrote their own ballads. Similarly in England William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798).
Wordsworth's ' ...
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poe ...
produced a collection of '' Lyrical Ballads'' in 1798 that included Coleridge's ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' (originally ''The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere'') is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–1798 and published in 1798 in the first edition of ''Lyrical Ballad ...
''. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats were attracted to the simple and natural style of these folk ballads and tried to imitate it. At the same time in Germany Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
cooperated with Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friendsh ...
on a series of ballads, some of which were later set to music by Schubert. Later important examples of the poetic form included Rudyard Kipling's "Barrack-Room Ballads
The Barrack-Room Ballads are a series of songs and poems by Rudyard Kipling, dealing with the late-Victorian British Army and mostly written in a vernacular dialect. The series contains some of Kipling's best-known works, including the poems "Gung ...
" (1892-6) and Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
's '' The Ballad of Reading Gaol'' (1897).
Ballad operas
In the 18th century ballad operas developed as a form of English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
stage entertainment, partly in opposition to the Italian domination of the London operatic scene. It consisted of racy and often satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...
spoken (English) dialogue, interspersed with songs that are deliberately kept very short to minimize disruptions to the flow of the story. Rather than the more aristocratic themes and music of the Italian opera, the ballad operas were set to the music of popular folk songs and dealt with lower-class characters. Subject matter involved the lower, often criminal, orders, and typically showed a suspension (or inversion) of the high moral values of the Italian opera of the period.
The first, most important and successful was '' The Beggar's Opera'' of 1728, with a libretto by John Gay
John Gay (30 June 1685 – 4 December 1732) was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for ''The Beggar's Opera'' (1728), a ballad opera. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peac ...
and music arranged by John Christopher Pepusch
Johann Christoph Pepusch (1667 – 1752), also known as John Christopher Pepusch and Dr Pepusch, was a German-born composer who spent most of his working life in England. He was born in Berlin, son of a vicar, and was married to Margherita de l ...
, both of whom probably influenced by Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
ian vaudeville and the burlesques and musical plays of Thomas d'Urfey (1653–1723), a number of whose collected ballads they used in their work. Gay produced further works in this style, including a sequel under the title ''Polly''. Henry Fielding, Colley Cibber, Arne, Dibdin, Arnold, Shield, Jackson of Exeter, Hook and many others produced ballad operas that enjoyed great popularity. Ballad opera was attempted in America and Prussia. Later it moved into a more pastoral form, like Isaac Bickerstaffe's ''Love in a Village'' (1763) and Shield's ''Rosina'' (1781), using more original music that imitated, rather than reproduced, existing ballads. Although the form declined in popularity towards the end of the 18th century its influence can be seen in light operas like that of Gilbert and Sullivan's early works like ''The Sorcerer
''The Sorcerer'' is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It was the British duo's third operatic collaboration. The plot of ''The Sorcerer'' is based on a Christmas story, ''An Elixir of Lo ...
'' as well as in the modern musical.
In the 20th century, one of the most influential plays, Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fru ...
and Bertolt Brecht's (1928) ''The Threepenny Opera
''The Threepenny Opera'' ( ) is a "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, ''The Beggar's Opera'', and four ballads by François Villon, with music ...
'' was a reworking of ''The Beggar's Opera'', setting a similar story with the same characters, and containing much of the same satirical bite, but only using one tune from the original. The term ballad opera has also been used to describe musicals using folk music, such as ''The Martins and the Coys'' in 1944, and Peter Bellamy's ''The Transports'' in 1977. The satiric elements of ballad opera can be seen in some modern musicals such as ''Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
'' and ''Cabaret
Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or d ...
''.
Beyond Europe
American ballads
Some 300 ballads sung in North America have been identified as having origins in Scottish traditional or broadside ballads.[N. Cohen, ''Folk Music: a Regional Exploration'' (Greenwood, 2005), pp. 14-29.] 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 America, including among the best known, 'The Ballad of Davy Crockett
"The Ballad of Davy Crockett" is a song with music by George Bruns and lyrics by Thomas W. Blackburn. It was introduced on ABC's television series ''Disneyland'', in the premiere episode of October 27, 1954. Fess Parker is shown performing the ...
' and 'Jesse James
Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw, bank and train robber, guerrilla and leader of the James–Younger Gang. Raised in the " Little Dixie" area of Western Missouri, James and his family maintained stro ...
'.[ They became an increasing area of interest for scholars in the 19th century and most were recorded or catalogued by ]George Malcolm Laws
George Malcolm Laws (January 4, 1919 – August 1, 1994) was a scholar of traditional British and American folk song.
He was best known for his collection of traditional ballads "American Balladry from British Broadsides", published in 1957 by the ...
, although some have since been found to have British origins and additional songs have since been collected.[ 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.]
Blues ballads
The blues ballad has been seen as a fusion of Anglo-American and Afro-American styles of music from the 19th 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 instead.[ They were often accompanied by banjo and guitar which followed ]the blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African- ...
musical format. The most famous blues ballads include those about John Henry and Casey Jones
John Luther "Casey" Jones (March 14, 1863 – April 30, 1900) was an American railroader who was killed when his passenger train collided with a stalled freight train at Vaughan, Mississippi.
Jones was a locomotive engineer for the Illinois Ce ...
.[
]
Bush ballads
The ballad was taken to Australia by early settlers from Britain and Ireland and gained particular foothold in the rural outback
The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...
. The rhyming songs, poems
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in a ...
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.[Kerry O'Brien December 10, 2003 7:30 Report]
abc.net.au
The 19th 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
The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...
. 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
The 1891 shearers' strike is one of Australia's earliest and most important industrial disputes.
The dispute was primarily between Trade union, unionised and non-unionised wool workers. It resulted in the formation of large camps of striking work ...
, class conflicts between the landless working class and the squatters
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there ...
(landowners), and outlaw
An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so that anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them ...
s such as Ned Kelly, as well as love interests and more modern fare such as trucking
Road transport or road transportation is a type of transport using roads. Transport on roads can be roughly grouped into the transportation of goods and transportation of people. In many countries licensing requirements and safety regulations e ...
. The most famous bush ballad is "Waltzing Matilda
"Waltzing Matilda" is a song developed in the Australian style of poetry and folk music called a bush ballad. It has been described as the country's "unofficial national anthem".
The title was Australian slang for travelling on foot (waltzing) ...
", which has been called "the unofficial national anthem of Australia".Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me?"
The National Library of Australia, retrieved 14 March 2008.
Sentimental ballads
Sentimental ballads, sometimes called "tear-jerkers" or "drawing-room ballads" owing to their popularity with the middle classes, had their origins in the early "Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street ...
" music industry of the later 19th century. They were generally sentimental, narrative, strophic songs published separately or as part of an opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...
(descendants perhaps of broadside ballads
A broadside (also known as a broadsheet) is a single sheet of inexpensive paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations. They were one of the most common forms of printed material between the ...
, but with printed music
Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed books or pamphlets in English, Ara ...
, and usually newly composed). Such songs include "Little Rosewood Casket" (1870), " After the Ball" (1892) and "Danny Boy
"Danny Boy" is a ballad, written by English songwriter Frederic Weatherly in 1913, and set to the traditional Irish melody of "Londonderry Air".
History
In 1910, in Bath, Somerset, the English lawyer and lyricist Frederic Weatherly initial ...
".[ The association with sentimentality led to the term "ballad" being used for slow love songs from the 1950s onwards. Modern variations include " jazz ballads", "]pop ballads
A sentimental ballad is an emotional style of music that often deals with romantic and intimate relationships, and to a lesser extent, loneliness, death, war, drug abuse, politics and religion, usually in a poignant but solemn manner.J. M. C ...
", "rock ballads
A sentimental ballad is an emotional style of music that often deals with romantic and intimate relationships
An intimate relationship is an interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Although an intimate r ...
", " R&B ballads" and " power ballads".[N. Cohen, ''Folk Music: a Regional Exploration'' (Greenwood, 2005), p. 297.]
See also
* Corrido
The corrido () is a popular narrative metrical tale and poetry that forms a ballad. The songs are often about oppression, history, daily life for criminals, the vaquero lifestyle, and other socially relevant topics. Corridos were widely popular ...
and Narcocorrido
* Alfred Perceval Graves
* List of the Child Ballads
* List of folk song collections
* List of Irish ballads
The following are often-sung Irish folk ballads and folk songs. The songs are arranged by theme under the categories "Politics and soldiering" and "Non-political" and are not necessarily contemporary to the events to which they relate.
Songs ma ...
* List of rock ballads
* Murder ballad
* Roud Folk Song Index
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...
* Song structure (popular music)
Song structure is the arrangement of a song, and is a part of the songwriting process. It is typically sectional, which uses repeating forms in songs. Common forms include bar form, 32-bar form, verse–chorus form, ternary form, strophic form, an ...
* Torch song
* Vaar
Notes
References and further reading
* Dugaw, Dianne. ''Deep Play: John Gay and the Invention of Modernity''. Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2001. Print.
*
* Randel, Don (1986). ''The New Harvard Dictionary of Music''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. .
*
* Winton, Calhoun. ''John Gay and the London Theatre''. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993. Print.
*
* Marcello Sorce Keller, "Sul castel di mirabel: Life of a Ballad in Oral Tradition and Choral Practice", Ethnomusicology, XXX(1986), no. 3, 449- 469.
External links
The British Literary Ballads Archive
* ttp://ebba.english.ucsb.edu The English Broadside Ballad Archive: searchable database of ballad images, citations, and recordings
Welsh Ballads resource guide
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070426114919/http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/archives_05.aspx Smithsonian Global Sound: The Music of Poetry€”audio samples of poems, hymns and songs in ballad meter.
The Oxford Book of Ballads, complete 1910 book by Arthur Quiller-Couch
English Broadside Ballad Archive
€”an archive of images and recordings of over 4,000 pre-1700 broadside ballads
*
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Folk music
Folk poetry
Poetic forms