Ballad

Created: March 14, 2021 11:17 AM
Forest status: #soil
Last Edited: June 20, 2021 12:23 PM
Retention Rating: #3⭐⭐⭐
Review Due: July 24, 2021 12:23 PM

Strictly speaking, ballad metre is verse in quatrains comprising lines of alternating #RemovedTag (poetry) tetrameter (four feet) and Triameter triameter (three feet), rhymed abcb (rather than abab, for instance). A typical example is the opening stanza from the anonymous ballad ‘Sir Patrick Spens’:

The King sits in Dunferline toun,
Drinkin the blude-reid wine
‘O whaur will A get a skeely skipper
Tae sail this new ship o mine?’

Ballads usually tell a story, so they’re a form of narrative poem, but written in the abcb quatrains illustrated above. However, ballads were originally composed to be sung and danced to, with musical accompaniment: the word ‘ballad’ comes from the Latin ballare, meaning ‘to dance’.