Medieval Ballads

A ballad is songlike poem that tells a story.

•The word ballad originally derived from an Old French word meaning “dancing song.”
-The Purpose: to entertain
(No movies? No TV? Can’t read?)
Go down to the town square and listen to the wandering minstrel sing stories.
- There are two types of ballads.
Folk ballads (anonymous authors) vs. Literary ballads (known poets: William Wordsworth, John Keats)
Folk ballads

A. Literature passed on by word of mouth, mostly sung, in the 15th century

B. As a result, underwent changes/ variations
D. They were collected and printed in the 18th and 19th century by:
- Sir Thomas Percy (Reliques of Ancient English Poetry in1765);
- Sir Walter Scott (Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1802);
- Francis James Child (English and Scottish Popular Ballads in 1882)
 Border ballads (e.g. The Hunting on the Cheviot)
 Supernatural ballads (e.g. The Wife of Usher’s Well)
 Historical ballads (e.g. Sir Patric Spense)
 Romantic ballads (e.g. Fair Annie)
 Ballads on Robin Hood (e.g. Robin Hood and Maid Marian)
Characteristics of the Ballads
A. Subject Matter
1. Stories came from everyday life of the common folk.
2. Common themes:
a. love
b. jealousy
c. revenge
d. disaster
e. adventure
B. Style
1. Narrative Style
a. short, simple and direct
b. single incident (climax is immediately achieved, in midia res)
c. little characterization (not fully developed characters)
d. little description (omits details)
e. little background information (some information is implied rather than stated)
f. story usually told by third person objective narrator/ through dialogue
g. use of repetition (incremental repetition)
B. Style
2. Form, usually:
Ballads are often written in ballad stanzas,
which usually have:
•four lines
•four accented syllables in lines one and three (tetrameters)
•three accented syllables in lines two and four (trimeters)
•an abcb rhyme scheme
The Wife of Usher’s Well
Sir Walter Scott was the first to publish this ballad (from an old woman who lived in Kirkhill, in West Lothian)
 Scott included this ballad in the first edition of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, presenting it in the
second volume, under the “Romantic Ballads”.
 “The Wife of Usher’s Well” is, in effect, a ghost story/ supernatural
 There is no physical geography connected to Usher’s Well.
 It is a ballad location which cannot be mapped
 The ballad is organized into 12 four-line stanzas rhyming ABCB.
 The first and third lines have four stresses, while the second and fourth have three.
They hadna been a week from her,
A week but barely ane,
Whan word came to the carline wife,
That her three sons were gane.

Summary
 A woman at Usher’s Well sends her three sturdy sons overseas but they are all drowned shortly after
departure and news of the drowning is brought to her.
 By her magic power, she compels their return and they come back about Martinmass wearing hats made of
the birch that grows at the gates of paradise.
 Their mother feasts them and then sits down by their bedside as they sleep.
 At dawn, the sons have to go back to where they came from and the youngest takes farewell of his mother
and his home and of an attractive young maidservant
Analysis
The ballad makes use of:
- very simple language
- alliteration in the ballad
- incremental repetition
-direct speech
-metaphor (“their hats were of birk”)
-dialogues
There are many dialect old words that are not easily understandable:
1. ane : one
2. carline : old
3. fashes : tumults
4. flood : sea
5. Martinmass : November 11, the feast of the St. Martin
6. Lang : long
7. mirk : dark
8. hame : home
9. birk : birch
10. syke : trench
11. sheigh : furrow
12. channerin : grumbling, fretting
13. sair : sore
14. maun : must
15. bide : endure
16. byre : cattle shed

1.Find examples of:

 Metaphor
 Alliteration
 Incremental repetition
 Rhyme
 Direct speech
2.What do we find out about the wife?
3.What do we learn about their way of life?
4.What pieces of evidence in the ballad point to the fact that the sons are dead?
5.What do we find out about one of the sons at the end?