Editing Ballad (section)

==Ballad form==
{{See also|AABA form}}
[[File:Here begynneth a gest of Robyn Hode.png|thumb|A sixteenth-century printed ballad, the [[A Gest of Robyn Hode]]]]
Ballads were originally written to accompany dances, and so were composed in [[couplets]] with refrains in alternate lines. These refrains would have been sung by the dancers in time with the dance.<ref name="British Literature pg 610">"Popular Ballads", ''The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century'', p. 610.</ref> Most northern and west European ballads are written in [[ballad stanza]]s or [[quatrains]] (four-line [[stanzas]]) of alternating lines of [[Iamb (foot)|iambic]] (an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable) [[tetrameter]] (eight syllables) and iambic [[trimeter]] (six syllables), known as [[Common metre#Variants|ballad meter]]. Usually, only the second and fourth line of a quatrain are rhymed (in the scheme a, b, c, b), which has been taken to suggest that, originally, ballads consisted of couplets (two lines) of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables.<ref name="I. Ousby, 2006 p. 66">D. Head and I. Ousby, ''The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 66.</ref> This can be seen in this stanza from "[[Lord Thomas and Fair Annet]]":

The '''horse''' | fair '''Ann''' | et '''rode''' | up'''on''' |<br />
He '''amb''' | led '''like''' | the '''wind''' |,<br />
With '''sil''' | ver '''he''' | was '''shod''' | be'''fore''',<br />
With '''burn''' | ing '''gold''' | be'''hind''' |.<ref name="Houseman1952" />

There is considerable variation on this pattern in almost every respect, including length, number of lines and rhyming scheme, making the strict definition of a ballad extremely difficult. In southern and eastern Europe, and in countries that derive their tradition from them, ballad structure differs significantly, like Spanish ''romanceros'', which are [[octosyllabic]] and use [[Literary consonance|consonance]] rather than rhyme.<ref>T. A. Green, ''Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art'' ([[ABC-CLIO]], 1997), p. 81.</ref>

Ballads usually are heavily influenced by the regions in which they originate and use the common dialect of the people. [[Scotland]]'s ballads in particular, both in theme and language, are strongly characterised by their distinctive tradition, even exhibiting some pre-Christian influences in the inclusion of supernatural elements such as travel to the [[Fairy]] Kingdom in the [[Scots language|Scots]] ballad "Tam Lin".<ref>"Popular Ballads" ''The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century'', pp. 610-17.</ref> The ballads do not have any known author or correct version; instead, having been passed down mainly by oral tradition since the Middle Ages, there are many variations of each. The ballads remained an oral tradition until the increased interest in folk songs in the 18th century led collectors such as [[Thomas Percy (bishop of Dromore)|Bishop Thomas Percy]] (1729–1811) to publish volumes of popular ballads.<ref name="British Literature pg 610" />

In all traditions most ballads are narrative in nature, with a self-contained story, often concise, and rely on imagery, rather than description, which can be tragic, historical, romantic or comic.<ref name="I. Ousby, 2006 p. 66" /> Themes concerning rural labourers and their sexuality are common, and there are many ballads based on the Robin Hood legend.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/980|title=Songs of Protest, Songs of Love: Popular Ballads in Eighteenth-Century Britain {{!}} Reviews in History|website=www.history.ac.uk|language=en|access-date=2017-12-12}}</ref> Another common feature of ballads is repetition, sometimes of fourth lines in succeeding stanzas, as a [[refrain]], sometimes of third and fourth lines of a stanza and sometimes of entire stanzas.<ref name="Houseman1952" />