Medieval Ballads

Research Blog

For my blog, I would like to explore the different parts of my paper and how they interact with one another. I have included all the written work I have up until now as a chubby skeleton. I still have to incorporate many sources and continue research on some parts of the paper, but I am confident with the base material I have. None of these sections is necessarily complete, as I may find more sources for a section, or I may eliminate an entire section all together.
Please enjoy learning about the medieval ballad.


The Medieval Ballad

INTRODUCTION AND DEFINITION

Ballads rely on the most climactic part of a story to bring the attention of the audience to these short singsong tales. Often told through use of no exposition or explanation at all, ballads drop the audience in medias res and continue on with a particularly formulated dramatic structure. 

This particular form of literature lacks a distinct definition. As David Atkinson states in his paper The Ballad and its Paradoxes, “although the English and Scottish ballads have an established place as a major folklore genre,they have remained stubbornly resistant to definition and much that has been written both about their history and about their essential characteristics has been ambiguous, confusing, and in some instances misleading” (123).

STRUCTURE OF A BALLAD

The structure of a ballad resembles a poem. The emotions of the poem, according to Thomas Pettitt in his article, ‘Worn by the Friction of Time’: Oral Tradition and the Generation of the Balladic Narrative Mode, “are expressed [by] the protagonists rather than the narrator” (341). There is often repetition within the words of the ballad which parallels the events it is expressing. Frequently, ballads from a specific area share phrases or sets of words similar to those in that same area. Noticeable dialect differences in ballads of different regions is quite common because originally they were sung or performed orally, not written.

Atkinson states that, “ Ballad stories are generally constrained in their length, partly as a consequence of … stylistic characteristics… and rarely exceed, say, 160 lines or so” (Paradoxes 123).

TYPES AND CONTENT OF A BALLAD

The content of a ballad depended on the author’s intent with the audience.

Domestic ballads are simply that. They deal with the everyday, contain little to no romance, and are often secular in nature. These ballads are “harsh and bitter, [and] the attitudes of its inhabitants cynical and suspicious” (Morgan 9). Sir Patrick Spens is a famous domestic ballad from the late thirteenth century which tells of the death of Margaret, the Maid of Norway.

Courtly love is a widely recognized and explored topic in the medieval period. Many of the ballads of this period center around romance and courtly love. “Ballads of romance and courtly love often concentrate upon the common aristocratic practices of arranged marriage, ‘stealing’ brides from another clan… [and] clan warfare” (Morgan 29).

Ballads of chivalry also expressed romantic or courtly love, but more basely. The chivalric ballad tells of behavioral expectations, social norms, and the lavish adventures of the aristocratic. Full of less euphemism and more direct language, the chivalric ballad is full of “adultery, betrayal, murder, political marriages, hypocrisy, and general futility” (Morgan 83).

Religious ballads are another, less common type of ballad. The most famous and generally thought to be the only surviving popular religious ballad is The Bitter Withy. Typically, “the medieval Church disapproved of balladry, as they did of many folk traditions, believing them to foster heresy, superstition, and rebellion” (Morgan 123).

Yeomanry ballads stem from the middle classes of the middle ages. Their economic mobility, or immobility, made it easy for them to relate to tales of Robin Hood or other heroes of the lower classes.

TRANSLATING BALLADS

Translating ballads into modern English is a difficult exploit. Often times the ballads were heard or recorded on paper in a dialectal form. The written ballads may have contained words that simply no longer exist with an equivalent in the modern form of the language.

AUTHORS OF BALLADS

Authorship of ballads was not always through the upper class. It is unwise to think that just because the lower class was not well educated that it was not educated at all. Yeomanry ballads are written by those of the middle class, as the name of this specific type suggests.

STORIES AND THE HUMAN HUNGER FOR TALES

Stories have been part of human tradition since words were able to fall from mouths. Ballads are part of the tradition of passing stories down through the generations by word of mouth. Like other folk stories, ballads survive simply through their story power.

PERFORMANCE

According to Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia

entry for ballads:

Ballads are meant to be sung. Although they are sometimes written down in song or “ballet” books, and although they are often studied as poetry, ballads are normally performed (with or without instrumental accompaniment) at home in the evening, in the bunkhouse, at the cribside, or in other everyday situations. The melodies of the ballads are important, influencing meter, stress, style, and—above all—mood. Nonetheless, the melodies are independent of the texts. Tunes and texts often marry, and an individual tune may always accompany an individual text, but many separations occur.

Specific types of instruments were used in the performance of ballads. Most frequently used were the string instruments.

AUDIENCE

The audience of the performance of ballads depended on the type. Ballads that told of triumphant middle class individuals were favored by the hardworking, whereas stories of the wealthy appealed to those with abundant free time.

Romantic ballads and ballads of courtly love appealed to both men and women, but women especially who yearned for the power of the women in the tales. This is even evident in the readership of stories and poems that expressed the ideals of romance and courtly love.

THE CHILD BALLADS

The Child Ballads are the most extensively collected and edited ballads from the beginning of balladry through the 1800s done by Francis Childs.

ROBIN HOOD

Whereas the Child Ballads are rich and well known, Robin Hood is traditionally the most timeless of the ballads. Surviving even in the pop culture of today, this narrative has transformed into many different skins. In its original form, Robin Hood was a short performance of a story that in the late 14th century appealed to many of the less wealthy working class. Revealing of the social ideas and state of the separate classes of England at the time, Robin Hood is a ballad that can carry forward in the form of children’s stories, television programs, and written novels.

THE BLACK LETTER BROADSIDE BALLAD

Significant to the history of the ballad is the black letter broadside ballad. These ballads were heavily decorated and often collected into books. After the rise of the printing press made these short stories available to many more people, the ballad became more of a short tale and less of a song. Written ballads are those which survived into the present with more frequency than the ballads that had not been written down.

SIBLINGS OF THE BALLAD

Lyrics are similar to ballads in their musical form.

THE BEATLES AND MODERN BALLAD

Modern ballads retain some of the medieval content. Not so strangely, the written form has once again been taken over by the sung versions of these tales. Little stories are famously encapsulated in the ballads of the Beatles, the band from Liverpool who enjoyed immense popularity in the 1960’s.

One most famous of the Beatles ballads is Norwegian Wood. This ballad has been well loved throughout the world; so well loved in fact that it has spawned expanded versions of itself and references in obscure Japanese literature.