Ballad
By: Erin Dement
Overview/History of Ballad
- The form had been known orally for centuries prior, with storytellers using the line breaks and rhythm to enrapture their audiences as they passed along tales and histories
- And the Origin comes from Medieval French dance songs
Purpose of a Ballad
- written to accompany dances, and so were composed in couplets with refrains in alternate lines. These refrains would have been sung by the dancers in time with the dance.
Characteristics of Ballad Poem
- it can be seen in a song
- lack of specific details
- Includes Dialogue
- 4 line stanzas, First and third lines have four stresses, Second and Fourth have three stresses, and it has a ABCD rhyming pattern
- Has an abrupt ending
Example of a Ballad
A girl I am and gladly do rejoice
in the new season of the year
Thanks be to Love and to my happy thoughts
Through the green meadows do I go
to see the yellow flower and the white and red,
the roses on their thorns and the white flowers deluce;
and I go likening them to the face of him
who loving me hath captured me,
even as she that doth desire
naught else save her delight