BALLAD (OE. and OF. balade, Fr. bal lade, dancing song, from Late Lat. and It. bal lore, to dance, from Gk. piaM(eiv, ballizein, to dance; cf. ball, ballet). A versified narrative, in a simple, popular, and often rude style, of some valorous exploit, or sonic tragic or touching incident. Indeed, as far as subject is concerned, the ballad is a species of minor epic. It is com paratively short, the story being circumscribed. and not embracing a combination of events, as the plan of the grand epic does. There can be little doubt that time ballad has been the earliest. form of poetry among all nations, and that the earlier epics or heroic poems of the higher kind, such as the Cid or the Yibclungen/ied, grew out of such simple beginnings. The old ballads were banded down orally, and thus underwent con stant changes. Accordingly, unlike modern po ems, the popular ballad has no individual author, and the treatment of the theme, whether war, crime, love, or enchantment, was thus always objective, there being no poet to thrust forward his own emotions. These ballads make their ap peal directly to the common feelings of love, hate, fear, shame, and grief, by mans of a great va riety of incident. Some of them are humorous, being merely fabliaux in ballad-measure; some are versions of current romances, hut the best of them spring from native tradition. It was long ago observed that the ballads of various na tions are frequently based upon the same or simi lar incidents; and the tracing of the development of these primitive lliirchen, whether they were carried from people to people by wandering min strels or are the common inheritance of the lndo European races, is of more interest and value to the student of folk-lore than is the study of their form to the historian of poetry.
All the British ballads, in their present form, are of comparatively recent date; the oldest manuscript now existing is assigned to the first quarter of the Fifteenth Century. But there are allusions to Robin Hood, by Langland. fifty or more years earlier; and, according to Child, this story undoubtedly began to assume a ballad form as early as the Thirteenth Century. There is no reason, in any ease, to doubt that the Anglo Saxons had their narrative songs; indeed, Taci tus speaks of certain earmina among the Ger manic peoples, though none of these have survived independently, tieing fused in such connected works as Brett ulf and the Nibelungenlied. Of
British ballads, those in the Scotch dialect are the best, being much more spirited than those composed in England. This may he accounted for partly by the fact that in the North their form was long preserved, while in the South they got into print early, and were thus subjected to a kind of revision which amounted to mutilation. It is difficult to make a selection, owing to the abundance of material. but among the best known are the "Gest of tZobin flood," a series of ballads forming a miniature epic: "The Hunting of the Cheviot;" :'Sir Patrick Spens;" "Mary Hamilton;" "The Wife of Usher's Well ;" "The Twa Corbies ;" "Clerk Saunders," and "Fair Helen of Kirkeonnel Lea." All these old ballads were intended for a musical setting. If short, they were sung; if of considerable length, they were chanted, often by professional minstrels, to the accompaniment of some instrument, as the harp or fiddle. The typical stanza (though sub ject to variations) of two rhymingverses. each having seven accents, divided into lines of four and three accents. Ballads were always popular in England, although after the invention of printing they were not so commonly sung. In the Eighteenth Century, a great revival of inter est in the older ballad literature took place, stimulated largely by the publication, in 1765, of Percy's leeliquas of Ancient English Poetry, de rived mainly from a Seventeenth Century manu script. Other famous collections followed: Scott's Border Ninstrrlsy (1802-03) and :Mother well's Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern ( 1827 ) The influence of Percy's book was very great, in both Englund and Germany. It led to a whole class of imitative ballad literature, of which may be mentioned Biirger's "Lenore," Coleridge'. "Ancient Mariner," Tennyson's "Re enge. "and Bossett Ps "King's Tragedy." Such imi tators, h owever, have rather taken suggestions from than held close to the older ballad form, and have especially departed from their models in the in trusion of the subjective note characteristic of modern poetry. In fact, the paramount interest of the revival of balladry lies in the fact that it broke up the exclusive domination of the heroic couplet, and led to freer versification.