BALLAD, the name given to a type of verse of unknown authorship, dealing with episode or simple motif rather than sus tained theme, written in a stanzaic form more or less fixed and suitable for oral transmission, and in its expression and treatment showing little or nothing of the finesse of deliberate art. This is not an attempt at definition, for that is hard indeed, if not impos sible. The familiar hints as to the character of the ballad, that it is "short," "adapted for singing," "simple in plot and metrical structure," and more emphatically, that it is "impersonal," help us to identify the genre. For practical purposes it is that kind of verse preserved in Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border and in Prof. Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads. All the English material we have, and are likely to get, will be found in the latter. By general consent these Scottish and English ballads, and mainly the former, are the best and the most typical.
At the outset, two warnings may be given. First, that there is danger of laying stress on the lexicographical association of the word (back to late Latin ballare, to dance) and of finding for the known form a tradition originating in the dance. This is said not to anticipate any consideration of the communal dance theory but as a reminder of the misnaming and loose attribution of which our dictionaries and literary histories can offer so many examples. Secondly, that the extended use of the term, as shown in the non descript varieties of later verse so-called, or in its technical appli cation in music, is out of place in the present account.
Interest in the form and history of the ballad was awakened late. The Robin Hood gests issued by the first printers, the broad sides of the 17th century, and the collection of written and printed texts by Pepys and others are but evidence of business intelligence or the "curiosity" of the antiquary. When Sidney is moved by "the old song of Percy and Douglas," he cannot forget the incivil ity of the style and what a Pindar might have made of it ; and when Addison, in the Spectator, praises the "perfection of sim plicity," he is merely thanking "our poet" (not a prehistoric choral crowd) for relief from the "wrong artificial taste" of his day. As this sense of contrast grew throughout the 18th century, collectors like Percy and the poetical experts in "imitation" gave the public what it wanted to swell the protest against classical complacency, but the interest was that of a new fashion and adventure in art. Now and then there are hints of more serious critical concern—in the method of editors such as Herd and Ritson—but it is not till the beginning of the 19th century, when Scott published his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (18o2–o3) and in the edition of 183o his "Introductory Remarks on Popular Poetry," that the foundation of the study of the ballads was truly laid in Great Britain. In the romantic fervour of the period there was encour agement to increase the number of ballads by search or by faking, and it was by the growth of this material, and especially by the discovery of different texts, oral or written, that the desire to judge the comparative merits and discover the earliest and purest versions was aroused. From this to the vexed questions of origin and transmission was a logical and immediate move.
Percy, his opponent Ritson, Scott, and indeed all the collectors and editors were of opinion, notwithstanding disagreement on minor points, that the ballads were the work of the minstrels and were derived from earlier and more "literary" work. "The editor is convinced," Scott wrote in the preface to "Lord Thomas and Fair Annie" in the Minstrelsy, "that the farther our researches are extended, the more we shall see ground to believe that the romantic ballads of later times are, for the most part, abridgments of the ancient metrical romances, narrated in a smoother stanza and more modern language." And again, in the Introduction to the same edition, he refers to, but declines to discuss, the question whether the ballads were composed by minstrels "professing the joint arts of poetry and music" or were "the occasional effusions of some self-taught bard." This view of a literary and recent ori gin was readily accepted : in Scott alone there is a hint that it might yet be defended, critically and historically.
In Germany, on the other hand, where Percy's Reliques had affected, even more powerfully than in England, the trend of national literature, we find a remarkable critical reaction at the very time when Scott gave a fresh start and direction to the min strel-theory. It first declares itself in A. W. Schlegel's essay on Burger (i 800) in the statement that ballads were not made for the people, but "in a certain manner (gewissermassen) by the people as a whole" (dos Volk im Ganzen) (Werke, ed. 'Ricking, viii. 8o) ; that they represent primitive unsophisticated art, the counterpart of the work of the "artist" of later literature, and so illustrate that duality in process and product which is funda mental to the aesthetic theory of Schlegel and others. It was left to the brothers Grimm, in their Altdeutsche Wdlder (1813), to advance to a generalization in which, hazily and with no hint of evidence, the early Folk in its communal strength actually assumes the function of poet. This called for protest from Schlegel in 181; (Werke, ed. Bocking, xii. and esp. pp. 385-386) in which, while emphasizing the double principle of nature and art, he in sisted that the latter must have its due. With this modification and Jacob Grimm's later claim (in 1851) for the source of poetry and music in the imaginative and personal emotion of the poet (Kleinere Schri f ten, 1864, I. p. 296) the early German view had become so confused that if a case was to be made out for it better evidence and argument must be found.
The most whole-hearted supporter of the communal theory has been Prof. F. B. Gummere, who in his account of the "rise of poetry as a social institution" claims the ballad as evidence of a co-operative folk-intelligence, first expressing itself in dance and choral song. His views attracted Andrew Lang who sought to strengthen them by reference to the f olk-lore of savage and illiter ate peoples. Prof. Kittredge, while declining Lang's revel in ethno logical analogies, restates the communal arguments with a definite ness not to be found in Child's scattered observations. He allows an initial creation by an individual author but holds that "the proc esses of oral tradition amount to a second act of composition" —"a collective composition"—"of an inextricably complicated character," which is not to be identified with the corruption by scribes and editors of a classical text ; that the original author is not a professional poet or minstrel but a member of the folk, and that the composition is not a solitary act but oral improvisation before an audience "in close emotional contact." When he de scribes, by picturesque stages, "the supposedly inconceivable phenomenon of a unanimous throng composing poetry with one voice" he has passed far from Child's conclusion "that the ballad is not originally the product or the property of the lower orders of the people." Thus elaborated, the tentative statements of Schlegel and the Grimms have been accepted by many as common places of literary history.
Earlier writers had no occasion to prove their faith in the "poet," whether minstrel or not, or, like Scott, they declined to consider a defence ; but the later working out of the Folk-theory has called forth a considered reply by the supporters of a literary origin, to whom the question of the place of the minstrel, whether as author or as transmitter, has lost its former importance. In 1895 W. J. Courthope protested against the "vague idea" that "as the ballad is before all things popular in its character, it was evolved in some mysterious manner out of the genius and tradi tions of the people themselves" (Hist. of Eng. Poetry, 1. p. 445), that the ballad "was usually a précis of a romance" by a selection of "the salient points" and that it developed "certain poetical features of its own" by reason of this relationship. This view was endorsed by T. F. Henderson, who concluded that "the lyric-epic did not originate amongst what is usually termed the folk," that the Carole sung to concerted movement was, by Scottish and Danish evidence, the concern of high-born folk, and that its later history with the common people is a tale of decadence. The pres ent writer, in 'goo, discussed the relationship of the ballad to the romance and romance-poem, in respect of subject and prosodic development, and ventured to describe it "as part of the literary debris of the middle ages." Others added their support, and, in deed, recent opinion has more and more inclined to oppose the claims of the folklorists. The latest attack on the positions held by Profs. Gummere and Kittredge was made in 1921 by their countrywoman Prof. Louise Pound. If it be unfair to claim the late Prof. W. P. Ker as a sworn partisan of the "literary" theorists, one may still find in the concentrated learning of his paper read before the British Academy in 1909 much to disconcert their opponents—on the value of the European analogues, on the loose ness of the term "communal authorship," on "Who are the Peo ple?" and the variety of answers to be given. Though he declares that the ballads "are not merely a limb of the great mediaeval body of romance" or "mere versified folklore," he holds to the literary quality and tradition, and his somewhat whimsical con clusion that the ballad stands apart, a thing by itself, an "Idea" in the Platonic sense, strengthens rather than weakens the belief in that tradition.
I. Age. The form is not found anywhere before the 15th century (Judas in Child's collection is not a ballad) ; and if older examples are yet to be discovered, they cannot be earlier than the appear ance of rhyme or before the 11th century. The smallness of the corpus is significant. The opinion that the ballads are later than the romance-poems, and, again, than the romance—that they are a perpetuation or recovery of the vital parts (episodes) of these decayed forms—coincides with what is known of the general cur tailment in literary form everywhere, and in all kinds, in the 15th century. The application of "Homeric theory" tests as to the priority of ballad or epic leads to nothing, for there is evidence in many cases to show that the ballads (e.g., on the subject of Robin Hood) are later than the cyclic texts of the romances. The choice of historical matter does not affect argument either way, for (i.) in few cases is the treatment contemporary, and (ii.) it is open to both "literary" and so-called "popular" art to work over traditional material.
2. Transmission. The assumption, suggested by oral transmis sion over a wide area and in a variety of versions, that the form must be primitive and may be studied to-day in the expression of illiterate people and even of savages, is not supported by examina tion of the ballads as we know them, even in their simplest form ; and it would force the conclusion that they were at their best when made and recited at a period farthest from "literary" in fluence. The admitted degeneracies due to oral repetition by the "people" are not good testimony to an original popular talent in ballad-making. Oral dissemination, which was most active when printing was a limited agency, proves nothing as to origin. All efforts to obtain an "authentic" or Ur text by the elimination of popular or editorial meddling must fail, as has been shown in Prof. Brandl's redaction of Willie of Winsburie, which does not en courage appreciation of the art of the tribal syndicate. In the investigation of the partial fakings and full "imitations" of the 18th and 19th centuries, this critical method, aided by external evidence, may be more successful. Research has found no proofs that the spread of the ballad throughout Europe had been helped by the Crusades (pace Child in his Cyclopaedia art.) or by the gypsies whose itineraries begin in the 15th century.
3. Anonymity. The fact that there are no clues to authorship has encouraged belief in the folk-theory, and in recent years the anonymity of the trench and march songs and chanties of the World War has been cited in analogy. But to state that these "were composed nobody remembers by whom" does not mean that they were not composed by somebody. Such a criterion is as irrelevant as it would be if applied in cases of unknown author ship where individual workmanship is readily admitted.
4. Sources. The view that the "choral throng" was the first author overlooks such difficulties as the following: (i.) The earliest ballads, which deal with such subjects as religion and hero story, do not indicate dance or communal singing as likely media for their preparation. The narrative character precludes the con ception of them as an accompaniment of the dance, as might be allowed in the case of the simple lyric ; for though corporate sing ing and dancing may produce chanties, jingles, and the like, it cannot tell a story as the ballad does. On the other hand, it is possible, though the evidence is scanty, that dance and song were added later to assist in oral perpetuation. Only in this sense can the term "communal" be applied, and here again it is associated with textual degeneracy. (ii.) There is good testimony, especially in Scotland and Denmark, that the ballads were the concern of the "upper classes," and that if they were danced to, as in the caroles, the words, as in the later masque, had been supplied for the enter tainment. The recital of pieces in the Complaynt of Scotlande excludes all suggestion of extempore or corporate genesis. To say that the ballads are "not aristocratic" is historically false and inadequate as a description of a genre concerned with the simple motives of general human interest, for whose expression, with the precision familiar in the ballads, a higher rather than a ruder art is requisite.
No one will maintain, as has been charged against some of the opponents of the communal theory, that all ballads are derived from earlier literary material and are to be explained, as so many can be, as parcellings of the longer romance-poems and the still longer romances, for some may be first drafts dealing with a simple motif, or may be directly inspired by mdrclien, or may be imag inary or misplaced accretions to accepted story.
5. Impersonal Character. The impersonal manner of the ballads, which is one of the stronger claims for a f olk-origin, is inherent to a kind which is essentially narrative. It cannot be assumed that because the single and personal note (the "I" of the lyric) is absent, the explanation is to be found in the co-operation of a "throng" which has neither the opportunity nor the willingness to allow self-expression by any of its members ; and it is easy to recall hundreds of impersonal poems by individual writers.
6. Metre. Even if it were allowed that the form is not too delib erate to be extemporized by the Folk, it would be difficult to explain away certain evidences of relationship with the metrical scheme of the romance-poem. No summary of this technical mat ter can be attempted here and the reader is referred to the bibli ography. The main claim of the folk-lorists is based on the refrain, which is considered as a primitive aid in the building up of an ex temporized song and as a reminder of the recurring movements of the dance. Yet, here again, the practice of the most sophisticated art bids us pause.
7. Diction. It may be largely a question of taste to decide be tween the primitive and artificial characteristics of the diction; and the investigation is often complicated by the interference of both the unlettered reciter and the literary reviser. The variations in a piece redelivered in different circumstances, with unequal care, by many unequally sensitive to expression, may give an ap pearance of folk-simplicity. It is difficult to reserve the clichés of words (e.g., "three"), inversion, and other familiar devices in the ballads to the untutored crowd.
8. Unique Character. Emphasis has been put by some on the unique character of the ballad—that it achieves by its choice of material and its method results outside the range of other forms, and is, as stated above, the expression of an "Idea" in the Platonic sense. Few may care to dispute this, but some may hint (i.) that every literary form is unique, in its general effect or in some of its constituent qualities, and (ii.) that this acknowledgment puts the ballad in a category beyond the unconsidered writing of an unliterary "throng." BIBLIOGRAPHY.-(i.) Collections. (a) English. Sir W. Scott, MinBibliography.-(i.) Collections. (a) English. Sir W. Scott, Min- strelsy of the Scottish Border, 3 vols. (1802-03; ed. T. F. Henderson, 4 vols., 1902) ; F. J. Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 8 vols. (1857-59, recast in 5 vols., 1882-98) ; C. Sargent and G. L. Kittredge, an epitome in i vol. of Child's work 0904). Many collections were issued in the 18th and 19th centuries, chiefly for popular literary purposes (see the "Bibliography" in Child, vol. v., and the lists in the critical works infra) . (b) European. See under each country in "Titles of Collections of Ballads" in Child, vol. v. (ii.) Critical (general) . Sir W. Scott, "Introduction" in the Minstrelsy; F. J. Child, art. "Ballad Poetry" in Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia, vol. i. (1893) ; Ward's English Poets, vol. i. ; F. B. Gummere, "Introduction" to Old English Ballads selected and edited The Beginnings of Poetry (1901), "Primitive Poetry and the Ballad" (Mod. Philology, I. 5903-04), The Popular Ballad (igo7), art. in Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. ii.; T. F. Henderson, "Introduction" to ed. of Scott's Minstrelsy (1902) , Scottish Vernacular Literature (5908), The Ballad in Literature (191o) ; G. Gregory Smith, The Transition Period (European Lit. of the 15th cent.) (1900) ; G. L. Kittredge, "Introduction" to ed. of Child (19o4) ; W. P. Ker, On the History of Ballads, in vol. iv. of Proceedings of Brit. Academy, "On the Danish Ballads," in Collected Essays II. (1925) ; Louise Pound, Poetic Origins and the Ballad (1921) . (G. G. S.) United States.—American ballads current long enough to be called folk-songs continue, for the most part, inherited patterns or develop variations of them. A text brought to some region of the United States, or originating there, may, in the course of time, roam to remote corners, taking on multiple forms.
Some of the American traditional pieces now made available by collectors are those of the southern Appalachians, including songs from Kentucky, Tennessee, the Virginias and the Carolinas, and those from New England, the West and the South-west. In addition to the immigrant ballads that first interested collectors, anthologists have now gathered the "logger" or "shanty-boy" songs of Maine and Michigan, songs of pioneer conditions and characters of the West and the South-west, songs of miners and "hobos" and similar pieces. Of interest also are songs of French Canada, Spanish-Mexico, and of the Negroes and the Indians.
Many of the English and Scottish ballads of the romantic and legendary type have immigrated to the United States. As they persist or roam westward they are likely to lose their archaic flavour and aristocratic touches, to drop their supernatural ele; ments, and to accommodate themselves to New World settings. Many or most of the American traditional songs of the i9th century derived from Old World originals. By the loth cen tury indigenous songs, developing shifting texts, take their places alongside those entering from without, like the European "Lord Randal" and "The Two Sisters." Some indigenous pieces may be dated with fair certainty, while the history of others has already been lost. A considerable number of them were floated by itin erant bands of singers and old-time minstrel troupes or travelling entertainers, or were taken about the country in popular plays. Many often gained currency in "broadsides" or popular "song sters," or were sold at booths in fairs or in the wake of circuses. A frequent source of preservation is the manuscript book. Some widely current indigenous songs in oral tradition are "Springfield Mountain," "Young Charlotte," "Jesse James," "Casey Jones," and the piece emerging, perhaps, from bar-room currency, known variously as "Frankie and Johnny," "Frances and Albert," etc. Traditional song has survived best in isolated regions or out of the way places, sung to the music of the violin, accordion, mouth organ, cabinet organ or banjo. For many pieces, Irish popular songs served as models or were locally adapted. Other models were songs popular on the stage or even well-known hymns. Sometimes the original airs are retained but often the same piece is sung to various airs in many parts of the country.
A rough classification of American ballad material includes death-bed confession pieces, songs of local murders and disasters, of criminals and rovers, of occupational pursuits, narratives of faithless or murderous lovers, lovers' reunions and occasional comedy pieces. Alongside story pieces or ballads proper in oral currency are religious songs, pseudo-negro songs, "western" songs, temperance songs, game and nursery songs, nonsense songs, and many varieties of sentimental pieces.
It seems unlikely that the legacy of the present period to tra ditional song will be very great. The competition of the phono graph and the radio has lessened the amount of singing for enter tainment among groups that in the past have done most to pre serve older song. Lyrics today contain little violence and few tragic situations. Story pieces and pieces with striking refrains have the best chance of survival. In music the word ballad signi fies a vocal setting of a ballad, or a purely instrumental setting in spired by a ballad. There are also choral ballads.' Pound, American Ballads and Songs (1922) ; Franz Rickaby, Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy (1926) ; Carl Sandburg, The American Songbag (1927) ; Newman I. White, Ameri can Negro Folk-Songs (1928) ; Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth, British Ballads from Maine (1929) ; A. K. Davis, Traditional Ballads of Vir ginia (2929) ; Campbell-Sharp-Karpeles, English Folk-Songs from the Southern Appalachians (1932) ; Helen H. Flanders and George Brown, Vermont Folk-Songs and Ballads (1932) ; J. A. and Alan Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs (1934) and Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1938) ; A. P. Hudson, Folksongs of Mississippi (1936) ; George Korson, Minstrels of the Mine Patch (1938) ; Joanna A. Colcord, Songs of American Sailormen (1939). The Journal of American Folk-lore has preserved much oral literature. (L. P.)