A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''
ballade
Ballad is a form of narrative poetry, often put to music, or a type of sentimental love song in modern popular music.
Ballad or Ballade may also refer to:
Music Genres and forms
* Ballade (classical music), a musical setting of a literary ballad ...
'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Britain and Ireland from the
Late Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the Periodization, period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Eur ...
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
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. ...
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
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, travelogue, etc.) or fictional ( fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller, novel, etc. ...
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 aspe ...
. Ballads derive from the medieval
French ''chanson balladée'' or ''
ballade
Ballad is a form of narrative poetry, often put to music, or a type of sentimental love song in modern popular music.
Ballad or Ballade may also refer to:
Music Genres and forms
* Ballade (classical music), a musical setting of a literary ballad ...
'', 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
Scandinavian and
Germanic traditions of storytelling that can be seen in poems such as ''
Beowulf''.
[J. E. Housman, ''British Popular Ballads'' (1952, London: Ayer Publishing, 1969), p. 15.] Musically they were influenced by the Minnelieder of the
Minnesang
(; "love song") was a tradition of lyric- and song-writing in Germany and Austria that flourished in the Middle High German period. This period of medieval German literature began in the 12th century and continued into the 14th. People who w ...
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
Judas Iscariot (; grc-x-biblical, Ἰούδας Ἰσκαριώτης; syc, ܝܗܘܕܐ ܣܟܪܝܘܛܐ; died AD) was a disciple and one of the original Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. According to all four canonical gospels, Judas betr ...
" in a 13th-century
manuscript.
[A. N. Bold, ''The Ballad'' (Routledge, 1979), p. 5.]
Ballad form
Ballads were originally written to accompany dances, and so were composed in
couplets 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 stanza
In poetry, a ballad stanza is a type of a four-line stanza, known as a quatrain, most often found in the folk ballad. The ballad stanza consists of a total of four lines, with the first and third lines written in the iambic tetrameter and the secon ...
s or
quatrains
A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines.
Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India, Ancient Gree ...
(four-line
stanzas) of alternating lines of
iambic (an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable)
tetrameter (eight syllables) and iambic
trimeter (six syllables), known as
ballad meter. 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":
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 and use ]consonance
In music, consonance and dissonance are categorizations of simultaneous or successive sounds. Within the Western tradition, some listeners associate consonance with sweetness, pleasantness, and acceptability, and dissonance with harshness, unpl ...
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 Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
'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 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, 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 (1744–1803) and the Brothers Grimm, who argue that ballads are originally communal compositions, and "individualists" such as Cecil Sharp
Cecil James Sharp (22 November 1859 – 23 June 1924) was an English-born collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician. He was the pre-eminent activist in the development of t ...
, 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'' (1802) the romantic poet and historical novelist Walter Scott 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 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's '' Piers Plowman'' indicates that ballads about ]Robin Hood
Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is dep ...
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 (1633–1703) and in the Roxburghe Ballads collected by Robert Harley, (1661–1724), which paralleled the work in Scotland by Walter Scott and Robert Burns
Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...
.[ Inspired by his reading as a teenager of '' Reliques of Ancient English Poetry'' 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''. 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. John ...
on the multi-volume '' Scots Musical Museum'', 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''.
Both Northern English and Southern Scots shared in the identified tradition of Border ballads, particularly evinced by the cross-border narrative in versions of " The Ballad of Chevy Chase" sometimes associated with the Lancashire-born sixteenth-century minstrel Richard Sheale.[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 and for England and Scotland by the Harvard professor Francis James Child. 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''. 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 A chapman (plural ''chapmen'') was an itinerant dealer or hawker in early modern Britain.
Etymology
Old English ''céapmann'' was the regular term for "dealer, seller", cognate with the Dutch ''koopman'' with the same meaning.
Old English ''céap ...
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 from the later 18th century. Respected literary figures Robert Burns
Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...
and Walter Scott in Scotland collected and wrote their own ballads. Similarly in England William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced a collection of ''Lyrical Ballads
''Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems'' is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literatu ...
'' in 1798 that included Coleridge's '' The Rime of the Ancient Mariner''. 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 cooperated with Schiller on a series of ballads, some of which were later set to music by Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...
. Later important examples of the poetic form included Rudyard Kipling's " Barrack-Room Ballads" (1892-6) and Oscar Wilde's ''The Ballad of Reading Gaol
''The Ballad of Reading Gaol'' is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, after his release from Reading Gaol () on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of gross indecency with other m ...
'' (1897).
Ballad operas
In the 18th century ballad operas developed as a form of English stage entertainment
Stage Entertainment is an international operating live entertainment company, a subsidiary of Advance Publications. The company was founded in 1998 by Joop van den Ende in Amsterdam.
History The Netherlands / Corporate
The root of the company l ...
, partly in opposition to the Italian domination of the London operatic scene. It consisted of racy and often satirical 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
''The Beggar's Opera'' is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satiri ...
'' of 1728, with a libretto by John Gay and music arranged by John Christopher Pepusch, both of whom probably influenced by Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, 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), ma ...
ian vaudeville and the burlesques and musical plays of Thomas d'Urfey
Thomas d'Urfey (a.k.a. Tom Durfey; 165326 February 1723) was an English writer and wit. He wrote plays, songs, jokes, and poems. He was an important innovator and contributor in the evolution of the ballad opera.
Life
D'Urfey was born in Devonsh ...
(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
Henry Fielding (22 April 1707 – 8 October 1754) was an English novelist, irony writer, and dramatist known for earthy humour and satire. His comic novel ''Tom Jones'' is still widely appreciated. He and Samuel Richardson are seen as founders ...
, Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber (6 November 1671 – 11 December 1757) was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir ''Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber'' (1740) describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling ...
, 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
Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...
early works like '' The Sorcerer'' as well as in the modern musical.
In the 20th century, one of the most influential plays, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's (1928) '' The Threepenny Opera'' 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 o ...
''.
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
"Streets of Laredo" (Laws B01, Roud 23650), also known as "The Dying Cowboy", is a famous American cowboy ballad in which a dying ranger (1911/ Rhymes of the range and trail) tells his story to another cowboy. Members of the Western Writers of Am ...
', 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' and ' Jesse James'.[ They became an increasing area of interest for scholars in the 19th 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.][ 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 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 C ...
.[
]
Bush ballads
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
"The bush" is a term mostly used in the English vernacular of Australia and New Zealand where it is largely synonymous with '' backwoods'' or ''hinterland'', referring to a natural undeveloped area. The fauna and flora contained within this a ...
, 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
Sheep shearing is the process by which the woollen fleece of a sheep is cut off. The person who removes the sheep's wool is called a '' shearer''. Typically each adult sheep is shorn once each year (a sheep may be said to have been "shorn" or ...
, 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 unionised and non-unionised wool workers. It resulted in the formation of large camps of striking workers, and min ...
, class conflicts between the landless working class and the squatters (landowners), and outlaws such as Ned Kelly
Edward Kelly (December 1854 – 11 November 1880) was an Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader and convicted police-murderer. One of the last bushrangers, he is known for wearing a suit of bulletproof armour during his final shootout wi ...
, as well as love interests and more modern fare such as trucking. The most famous bush ballad is " Waltzing Matilda", 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" 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 libr ...
(descendants perhaps of broadside ballads, but with printed music, and usually newly composed). Such songs include "Little Rosewood Casket" (1870), " After the Ball" (1892) and " Danny Boy".[ The association with sentimentality led to the term "ballad" being used for slow ]love song
A love song is a song about romantic love, falling in love, heartbreak after a breakup, and the feelings that these experiences bring. A comprehensive list of even the best known performers and composers of love songs would be a large order ...
s from the 1950s onwards. Modern variations include "jazz 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. Cu ...
", " pop ballads", " rock ballads", " R&B ballads" and "power 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. Cu ...
".[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
A narcocorrido (, "narco-corrido" or ''drug ballad'') is a subgenre of the Regional Mexican corrido (narrative ballad) genre, from which several other genres have evolved. This type of music is heard and produced on both sides of the Mexico� ...
* Alfred Perceval Graves
Alfred Perceval Graves (22 July 184627 December 1931), was an Anglo-Irish poet, songwriter and folklorist. He was the father of British poet and critic Robert Graves.
Early life
Graves was born in Dublin and was the son of The Rt Rev. Cha ...
* List of the Child Ballads
The Child Ballads is the colloquial name given to a collection of 305 ballads collected in the 19th century by Francis James Child
Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 – September 11, 1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, ...
* List of folk song collections
This is a list of folk song collections including pioneer and notable work in collecting folk songs.
Many such collections were made in the 19th century. The earlier ones are often considered to be parts of the National Romanticist interests in fo ...
* List of Irish ballads
* List of rock ballads
* Murder ballad
Murder ballads are a subgenre of the traditional ballad form dealing with a crime or a gruesome death. Their lyrics form a narrative describing the events of a murder, often including the lead-up and/or aftermath. The term refers to the content ...
* Roud Folk Song Index
* Song structure (popular music)
* Torch song
A torch song is a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love, either where one party is oblivious to the existence of the other, where one party has moved on, or where a romantic affair has affect ...
* Vaar The var, in Punjabi poetry, is a heroic ode or ballad which generally narrates legend such as stories of Punjabi folk heroes or a historical event.''The Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature (Volume One - A to Devo)''. Amaresh Datta, ed. Sahitya Akadem ...
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
*
{{Authority control
Folk music
Folk poetry
Poetic forms