The ballad is a narrative song composed and recited by individuals and sung to a melodic accompaniment that follows the pattern of the verses. In England, the first ballads were folk ballads, meaning that they were products of an oral tradition. Folk ballads were sung before such narratives, or stories, were written down.
English folk ballads share several characteristics with ballads from other countries, and many are based upon songs from other nations. They usually tell stories of common folk rather than the aristocracy, and they focus upon a central event, situation, or character; feature a strong, dramatic element; and display what scholar Gordon Hall Gerould calls an “impersonal quality.” Although the events described in the ballad may be terrible or horrendous (such as the loss of a child or a murder), the action receives little commentary. Other aspects of ballads include an element of the supernatural, displays of physical courage, an emphasis on domestic life, and a motif of love.
Although English folk ballads follow multiple forms, a traditional form prevails. The standard ballad stanza is composed of four-line stanzas that rhyme abcb. The first and third lines of the stanzas contain four accented syllables, and lines two and three carry three accented syllables. The amount of unstressed syllables varies, and the rhyme is not always perfect. Most ballads contain a refrain, and many folk ballads use assonance (similar vowel sounds with differing consonant sounds) rather than rhyme.
The ballad “The Three Ravens” tells of a dead knight who is carried away by a deer before three ravens successfully consume his decaying body.
“Lord Rendal” is a song about a lover who has been betrayed by his beloved and lies sick and dying. Not all ballads, however, focus upon death. Other popular ballads celebrate successes, such as those recounting stories of Robin Hood and his adventures. In “Robin Hood and Allen-a-Dale,” Robin Hood helps Allen, a soon-to-be loyal servant, by saving Allen’s beloved from marriage to an old knight.
Ballads were a major form of literature and entertainment in the Middle Ages. While they remained popular with the advent of printing and the spread of new forms of literature, by the 18th century they came to be taken seriously as historical artifacts. During this time, English ballads were collected by scholars such as Thomas Percy and Sir Walter Scott. These collections played a significant role in the genesis of English Romantic poetry and inspired writers such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats.
Works of Ballads
Child, Francis James. English and Scottish Popular Ballads. New York: Dover, 1965.
Works about Ballads
Gerould, Gordon Hall. The Ballad of Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932.
Percy, Thomas. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 3 vols. London: Routledge, 1996.
