Editing Ballad (section)

==Composition==
Scholars of ballads have been divided into "communalists", such as [[Johann Gottfried Herder]] (1744–1803) and the [[Brothers Grimm]], who argue that ballads are originally communal compositions, and "individualists" such as [[Cecil Sharp]], who assert that there was one single original author.<ref name="N. Bold, 1979 p. 5" /> Communalists tend to see more recent, particularly printed, broadside ballads of known authorship as a debased form of the genre, while individualists see variants as corruptions of an original text.<ref>M. Hawkins-Dady, ''Reader's Guide to Literature in English'' (Taylor & Francis, 1996), p. 54.</ref> More recently scholars have pointed to the interchange of oral and written forms of the ballad.<ref name="A. Green, 1997 p. 353">T. A. Green, ''Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art'' (ABC-CLIO, 1997), p. 353.</ref>