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A ballad is a narrative poem, usually set to music; thus, it often is a story told in a song. Any story form may be told as a ballad, such as historical accounts or fairy tales in verse form. It usually has foreshortened, alternating four-stress lines ("ballad meter") and simple repeating rhymes, often with a refrain.

If it is based on a political or religious theme, a ballad may be a hymn. It should not be confused with the ballade, a 14th and 15th century French verse form.

Contents 1 Traditional Poetic Form 2 Broadsheet ballads 3 Border ballads 4 Literary ballads 5 Ballad opera 6 Popular song 7 Famous ballads 7.1 Traditional 7.2 Modern 7.2.1 Traditional definition 7.2.2 Popular definition 8 See also 9 External links

1. Normally a short narrative arranged into four line stanzas with a memorable meter.
2. Typical ballad meter is a first and third line with four stresses (iambic tetrameter) and then a second and fourth line with three stresses (iambic trimeter).
3. The rhyme scheme is typically abab or abcb.
4. Often uses colloquialisms to enhance the story telling (and sometimes to alter the rhyme scheme).
5. A Ballad is usually meant to be sung or recited in musical form.

Main article: Broadside (music)

See also: Child Ballads

Broadsheet ballads (also known as broadside ballads) were cheaply printed and hawked in English streets from the sixteenth century. They were often topical, humorous, and even subversive; the legends of Robin Hood and the pranks of Puck were disseminated through broadsheet ballads.

New ballads were written about current events like fires, the birth of monstrous animals, and so forth, giving particulars of names and places. Satirical ballads and Royalist ballads contributed to 17th century political discourse. In a sense, these ballads were antecedents of the modern newspaper.

Thomas Percy, Robert Harley, Francis James Child, Sir Walter Scott and James Hogg were early collectors and publishers of ballads from the oral tradition, broadsheets and previous anthologies. Percy's publication of Reliques of Ancient Poetry and Harley's collections, such as The Bagford Ballads, were of great import in beginning the study of ballads.

Main article: Border ballad

Border ballads are a subgenre of folk ballads collected in the area along the Anglo-Scottish border, especially those concerned with border reivers and outlaws, or with historical events in the Borders.

Notable historical ballads include "The Battle of Otterburn" and "The Hunting of Cheviot" or "The Ballad of Chevy Chase".

Outlaw ballads include "Johnnie Armstrong", "Kinmont Willie", and "Jock o' the Side".

Other types of ballads (including fairy ballads like "Thomas the Rhymer") are often included in the category of border ballad.

Literary ballads are those composed and written formally. The form, with its connotations of simple folkloric authenticity, became popular with the rise of Romanticism in the later 18th century. Literary ballads may then be set to music, as Schubert's Der Erlkönig and The Hostage, set to a literary ballads by Goethe (see also Der Zauberlehrling) and Schiller. In Romantic opera a ballad set into the musical texture may emphasize or play against the theatrical moment. Atmospheric ballads in operas were initiated in Weber's Der Freischütz and include Senta's ballad in Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer, or the 'old song' 'Salce' Desdemona sings in Verdi's Otello. Compare the stanza-like structure and narrative atmosphere of the musical Ballades for solo piano of Chopin or Brahms.

Main article: Ballad opera

A particularly English form, the ballad opera, has as its most famous example John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, which inspired the 20th-century cabaret operas of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (q.v.). Ballad strophes usually alternate between iambic tetrameter and iambic pentameter, though this is not always the case.

Main article: Ballad (music)

In the 20th Century, "ballad" took on the meaning of a popular song "especially of a romantic or sentimental nature" (American Heritage Dictionary). Casting directors often divide songs into two categories: "ballads" (slower or sentimental songs) and "up" tunes (faster or happier songs). A power ballad is a love song performed using rock instruments.

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• Akilattirattu Ammanai
• Ballad of Chevy Chase
• Ballad of Jesse James
• Ballad of Keawaiki
• Barbara Allen (song)
• Edward
• Golden Vanity
• Greensleeves
• Henry Martin
• John Barleycorn
• Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier
• La Belle Dame Sans Merci
• Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight
• Lochinvar
• Lord Randall
• Lord Willoughby
• Lovely Joan
• Lyke-Wake Dirge
• Man From Snowy River, The
• Many ballads of Robin Hood
• Mary Hamilton
• Mary Tamlin
• Me and You
• Molly and Tenbrooks (aka "The Racehorse Song")
• Oh Shenandoah
• Scarborough Fair
• Sir Patrick Spens
• Tam Lin
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol
• The Ballad of Sal Villanueva
• The Battle of Harlaw
• The Battle of New Orleans
• The Battle of Otterburn
• The Colour of his Hair
• The Cruel Brother
• The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry
• The Gypsie Laddie
• The Hostage
• The Mines of Avondale
• The Three Ravens
• Thomas the Rhymer
• Vadakkan Pattukal
• Verner Raven - oldest Scandinavian ballad with music

Some of these also qualify under the pop definition.

• A Day in the Life
• Ballad of a Thin Man
• Ballad of Davy Crockett
• Ballad of the Alamo
• Ballad of the Green Berets
• Beautiful
• Carry On Wayward Son
• Frankie and Johnny
• Frankie Silver
• Hey Jude
• Hotel California
• Hurricane
• I Don't Want to Miss a Thing
• I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night
• Listening to Freddie Mercury
• Me And Bobby McGee
• November Rain
• Ode to Billie Joe
• On Top of Spaghetti
• She's Leaving Home
• Space Oddity
• Spread Your Wings
• Stairway to Heaven
• Still Loving You
• The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins
• The Ballad of Curtis Lowe
• The Ballad Of Gerda And Tore
• The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle
• The Ballad of John and Yoko
• The Ballad Of Moon Dog Mayne
• The Ballad of Optimus Prime
• The Ballad of The Sneak
• The Devil Went Down to Georgia
• The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
• Tom's Diner
• Trapped in the Closet
• Tsunami
• Uneasy Rider
• Wonderwall (song)

Thousands of songs could be listed here. The few following may represent the variety.

• 100 Years
• American Pie
• Candle in the Wind and Candle in the Wind 1997
• Going to California
• Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
• Goodbye to Romance
• Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
• Stardust

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• List of folk song collections
• Francis James Child
• Graves, Alfred Perceval

• The Bodleian Library Ballad Collection: view facsimiles of printed ballads
• The Traditional Ballad Index
• Murder Ballads
• English and some German ballads
• Folk Music, Child Ballads, Popular Songs In American History, Sea Shanties etc.
• [1]
• Smithsonian Global Sound: The Music of Poetry - audio samples of poems, hymns and songs in ballad meter.
• Velle Espeland, ...all for his maiden fair: The Scandinavian ballads