Ballad

The narrative song of folk and broadside: quatrains, refrains, and stories of love, murder, and the supernatural.

Specifications & Metrics

type

Narrative song form

origin

Medieval oral tradition, British Isles

originator

Anonymous folk singers; broadside printers

meter

Ballad stanza: alternating 4-3 stress quatrains, abcb

Core Principles & Analysis

• The ballad stanza rhymes only lines two and four, carrying the plot in dialogue.
• Border ballads like 'Bonny Barbara Allan' survived by oral transmission.
• Literary ballads of the Romantic era imitated the folk mode consciously.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Ballad