Form of the Month for October 2009: Ballad Ballads fall into two categories, “street” and “traditional”. It is hard to say which of these styles is the older of the two, but it appears that the traditional ballad, which has its roots in the illiterate, oral, traditions of the country, may be slightly older. Minstrels, bards and itinerant storytellers would have recited these poems on feast/holy days in small communities or in the poorer quarters of towns and cities. The street ballad seems to have evolved to pander to a growing educated class. As the middle/tradesman class grew wealthy, they were able to swell the ranks of the literate. With education, particularly literacy, considered an unnecessary luxury at the time, the well to do used it to distinguish themselves from the impoverished underclass. They accomplished this by refining ballad verse and printing it so that an individual could advertise their wealth. It should be mentioned that the nobility also had a stake in the evolution of the street ballad, but they were not the driving force behind its refinement. They had little need to separate themselves from the masses, and, as a result, their contributions were mostly refinements that reflected the quality of performer who provided the evenings entertainment.
Very few ancient ballads have survived into the modern era. “Traditional” ballads were passed through the generations orally. Few survived the ravages of misfortune, poor memory, and fashion to make it to the modern day. “Street” ballads hardly faired better. Although they were printed, it was usually on single sheets of paper of the poorest quality. Paper demonstrated education and wealth, but it was an extremely costly product. High quality paper was a luxury that the market could not bear.
There is little foundational difference between the two types of ballad. The main differences are in their content. The traditional ballad tended to utilize simpler language, its themes were tragic, romantic, or heroic (if not all three), and the characters and actions were detail rather than content oriented. Think of the last this way, traditional ballads preferred the gory details but had rather wooden archetypal characters. Street ballads were just the opposite. They tend to utilize courtly language and phrasing, the stories were much more realistic and un-heroic, and the street ballads tend to follow a less frenetic, more leisurely, pace. The depth of the street ballad has made it the predominant form employed since the Middle Ages.
An aspect of all ballads is their lyrical quality. Many are, or were, set to music. Since they are meant to tell a story, this means that the balladic style is rather plain and unadorned. Creativity would have made ballads difficult to understand when chanted, accompanied by music, or sung.
Ballads are composed of quatrains of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. This means that the stanzas are composed of 4 lines of alternating 8 and 6 syllables. The iambic meter is only a guide, and is/was frequently thrown off to accommodate lyrical requirements. Ballads tend to rhyme "abcb" with "a" and "c" sometimes forming a partial rhyme. In modern ballads the rhyme scheme will often follow an "abab" pattern, although this is mainly a means, read cheat, for creating a lyrical quality to the poem without having to provide a score. Modern ballads can also drop the strict reliance on tetrameter and trimeter, but they try to adhere to repeating pattern of common feet.
Literary example: Henry Longfellow’s
“The Wreck of the Hesperus” ... and here's a fine
audio of the reading it from the Hesperus!
A sample stanza:
A youth clad bold in Lincoln green,
Merry as morning sun,
Steals hushed beneath the ancient boughs,
His fame as yet unsung.
Pages: 1
Ballad ~ Form of the Month, October 2009 (Read 145 times)
