Medieval Ballads

MRS. LEACHBritish Literature

Unit 2: The Middle Ages

Instruments of the Middle Ages

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Ballads• were story poems set

to music so that non-readers and non-writers could enjoy sensational events and everyday calamity. Usually they were from an anonymous author and just like Anglo-Saxon works, were spread from singer to singer. The name of this singer was a Troubadour.

ELEMENTS OF BALLAD STRUCTURE

• 4 line stanzas• 2nd and 4th lines rhyme• Contain dialogue• Refrains- repeated lines or

phrases

Definition of SORDID

marked by baseness or grossness  dirty, filthy wretched, squalid , meanly avaricious :  covetous

COMMONALITIES in BALLADS

• Supernatural events• Sensational, sordid, tragic subjects• Refrain• Omission of details• Incremental repetition• Question and answer format• Conventional phrases• *most of these elements were used to

build suspense

SUBJECTS in BALLADS

• Tragic love• Domestic conflicts• Wars• Shipwrecks• Crimes• outlaws

THEMES in BALLADS

• Revenge• Rebellion• Envy• Betrayal• Remorse• Loyalty• Patriotism• superstition

• American Folk and Country and Western Music

• When English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish people left their homes to settle in America, the old ballads were part of their baggage. Some ballads have changed little since then. When researchers traveled through the southern Appalachian Mountains in the early 1900s to record the songs of the mountain people, they found them singing “John Randolph,” a ballad markedly similar to “Lord Randall.” On the other hand, “Streets of Laredo,” which tells the story of a cowboy dying of a gunshot wound, retains the remnants of its British ancestry only in the line, “Oh beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly.” The fife and drum refer to a British military funeral. Even country and folk ballads written in this century tend to repeat the subjects and themes of the old medieval ballads. Consider:

• • ballads with supernatural elements, such as the country and western song “Phantom 309” about ghost truck drivers;

• • ballads based on actual tragedies, such as the country and western song “Ballad of the Green Berets” from the Vietnam War era and the folk songs “Birmingham Sunday” from the civil rights struggle of the sixties and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” about a twentieth-century sea tragedy;

• • ballads about domestic disasters, such as the country and western song “The Grand Tour,” about a singer who tours his home after his wife has left him.

A MODERN BALLAD:“The Devil Went Down to Georgia”by Charlie Daniels’ Band

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A MODERN BALLAD:“Ballad of Birmingham”by Dudley Randall

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A MODERN BALLAD:“Someone Like You”by Adele

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Other ballads

• “Whiskey Lullaby” by Allison Krauss

• “The One That Got Away” by Katy Perry

• “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye