BALLAD, a short narrative poem in stan zas, originally. intended for singing. The name, which is derived from the Latin ballare, to dance, is frequently used very loosely and ap plied to a vanety of songs and verse-tales with no real bond of association. But in the stricter sense it belongs to a comparatively small body of anonymous traditional poetry, the produc tion of which has practically ceased in English speaking countries, though literary imitations of the type are still composed. Its most char acteristic quality is impersonality. Not only is the author unlcnown, but in the pure ballad there is no trace of his individuality.. The material of the poem is usually popular in ori gin and the sentiment and point of view are those, not of a single person, but of the whole people. °People,* in the sense here used, has reference not to the lower classes but to so ciety in a period when in the matter of cul ture the community was homogeneous. Thus the origins of the kind of poetry of which the ballad is a survival are to be looked for in a comparatively primitive stage of society, be fore the °poetry of art* came into existence, when the tribal community could still express itself in simultaneous utterances accompanying the rhythmic movements of dance or march.
This view of the origin of ballad poetry is not universally accepted. Over against it there is placed the apparently simpler theory that the ballads are the production of minstrels, from the 15th century down, who derived from ro mances and other sources in artificial litera ture stories which they threw into crude stan zas, to chant sometimes in the houses of the great, sometimes at fairs and other popular gatherings. But the objections to this view are serious. First, minstrel ballads such as are here described were manufactured and still exist in abundant broadsides and chap books, but they are universally lacking in pre cisely. those qualities of impersonality and un consciousness which constitute at once the mark and the charm of the true popular ballad. Second, the minstrel theory ignores the exist ence of a large mass of ethnological evidence, showing the indubitable and well-nigh univer sal existence of the practice of communal song and the development in this song of a narrative element. Third, it is a matter of definite proof that the genuine ballads which have been collected dunng the last two cen turies have come, with rare exceptions, not from the mouths or wallets of minstrels, but from humble unprofessional people, °the spin sters and the knitters in the sun,* who have in so many branches of folk-lore proved the best conservators of the heritage of the ple. A minstrel's addition to lus stock ore:.-n
occasional piece of more or less degraded pop ular verse in no wise overthrows the signifi cance of this fact. There is no reason to be lieve that, in the centuries before ballad-col lecting began, the medium of transmission was substantially different.
The argument on the other side has al ready been partly indicated. -First, there ex ists the evidence of the wide-spread practice of accompanying communal activity—in la bor, ceremonial or festal dance—with rhyth mic utterances; the gradual growth of these utterances in definiteness of form; the prac tice of making them the medium of narrating some episode known to all—e.g., the story of some great deed accomplished by the hero whose death is being lamented, or the manner of the victory which is being celebrated, or some ludicrous incident in the season's labor happily finished,— the contribution of a new line or stanza now by this, now by that mem ber of the dancing throug; the recurrent re frain sung by all; the final creation of a nar rative song for which no one individual is re sponsible, but which is the expression of the thought and feeling of all. Second, the un individual element is intensified by the method of transmission. Before any extant ballad came into the form in which we find it, it had been handed down from mouth to mouth through many generations, modified endlessly in detail, but by this very process losing what ever individual elements might at any stage appear in it, and keeping, with what ever change of matter or modernization.of dia lect, just those qualities of impersonality and unconsciousness of literary effect which have been noted as its characteristic traits. Third, the theory suggested by these facts receives corroboration from the refrain and from the characteristic narrative method of the ballad, the so-called °incremental repetition.* The phrase is used to describe the method of tell ing a story by the repetition in a set of stanzas of the same words with just enowh change to advance the narrative one step. Thus the ma tive for the murder of the Bonnie Earl of Murray is gradually insinuated by this method in these stanzas : He was a braw gallant, And he rid at the ring; And the bonny Earl of Murray, Oh he might have been • king! He was • brew gallant, And he played at the be; And the bonny Earl of Murray Was the flower among them a'.