The study of ballads

Section II

The Ballad

Focus on History: 1066-1485

Answer the following questions:

Ballad: Key facts

author · Unknown

genre · A ballad /ˈbælɪd/ is a form of verse, set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "dancing songs".

In the later 19th century the term took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song

language · English, the common dialect of the people heavily influenced by the region in which it originates.

Scottish ballads in particular are distinctively un-English, even showing some pre-Christian influences in the inclusion of supernatural elements such as the fairies in the Scottish ballad "Tam Lin".

time and place written · British Isles from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa.

narration · 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 · love, marriage, religion, drinking-songs, legends, and early journalism, which included disasters, political events and signs, wonders and prodigies;

ballads based on the legend about Robin Hood.

protagonist · Robin Hood, Tam Lin

Ballads were originally written to accompany dances, and so were composed in couplets with refrains(repetitions) in alternate lines. These refrains would have been sung by the dancers in time with the dance.

The ballads do not have any correct version; instead, having been passed down mainly by oral tradition since the Middle Ages, there are many variations of each.

The study of ballads

Early collections of English ballads were made by:

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703)

Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (1661–1724).

In the 18th century:

England

Thomas d'Urfey Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719–20)

Bishop Thomas Percy Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765).

Scotland:

Walter Scott

Robert Burns

James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum

George Thomson's Scottish Airs.

Key work on the traditional ballad was undertaken in the late 19th century in Denmark by Svend Grundtvig

For England and Scotland by the Harvard professor Francis James Child The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.