Topic summary
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of England, Ireland and Scotland 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.
While ballads have no prescribed structure and may vary in their number of lines and stanzas, many ballads employ quatrains with or rhyme schemes, the common feature being the rhyming second and fourth lines. Couplets rarely appear in ballads.
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. The term is also still associated with the concept of a stylized storytelling song or poem, and in this sense the phrase "The Ballad of ..." has been used metaphorically in the titles of other media such as films.