Editing Ballad (section)

==Classification==
European Ballads have been generally classified into three major groups: traditional, broadside and literary. In America a distinction is drawn between ballads that are versions of European, particularly British and Irish songs, and 'Native American ballads', developed without reference to earlier songs. A further development was the evolution of the blues ballad, which mixed the genre with Afro-American music. For the late 20th century the music publishing industry found a market for what are often termed sentimental ballads, and these are the origin of the modern use of the term 'ballad' to mean a slow love song.

===Traditional ballads===
{{See also|Child Ballads}}
[[File:The-Twa-Corbies.jpg|right|thumb|Illustration by [[Arthur Rackham]] of the Scots ballad "[[The Twa Corbies]]"]]
The traditional, classical or popular (meaning of the people) ballad has been seen as beginning with the wandering [[minstrels]] of late medieval Europe.<ref name="Houseman1952" /> From the end of the 15th century there are printed ballads that suggest a rich tradition of popular music. A reference in [[William Langland]]'s ''[[Piers Plowman]]'' indicates that ballads about [[Robin Hood]] were being sung from at least the late 14th century and the oldest detailed material is [[Wynkyn de Worde|Wynkyn de Worde's]] collection of Robin Hood ballads printed about 1495.<ref name="Sweers2005">B. Sweers, ''Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 45.</ref>

Early collections of English ballads were made by [[Samuel Pepys]] (1633–1703) and in the [[Roxburghe Ballads]] collected by [[Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer|Robert Harley]], (1661&ndash;1724), which paralleled the work in Scotland by [[Walter Scott]] and [[Robert Burns]].<ref name=Sweers2005/> Inspired by his reading as a teenager of ''[[Reliques of Ancient English Poetry]]'' by [[Thomas Percy (bishop of Dromore)|Thomas Percy]], Scott began collecting ballads while he attended Edinburgh University in the 1790s. He published his research from 1802 to 1803 in a three-volume work, ''[[Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border]]''. Burns collaborated with [[James Johnson (engraver)|James Johnson]] on the multi-volume ''[[Scots Musical Museum]]'', a miscellany of folk songs and poetry with original work by Burns. Around the same time, he worked with [[George Thomson (musician)|George Thompson]] on ''[[A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice]]''.<ref name="Scott">{{cite book|last=Gregory|first=E. David |title=Victorian Songhunters: The Recovery and Editing of English Vernacular Ballads and Folk Lyrics, 1820-1883|url=https://archive.org/details/victoriansonghun0000greg|url-access=registration|access-date=August 30, 2017|date=April 13, 2006|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=978-1-4616-7417-7|pages=[https://archive.org/details/victoriansonghun0000greg/page/42 42]–43}}</ref>

Both Northern English and Southern Scots shared in the identified tradition of [[Border ballads]], particularly evinced by the cross-border narrative in versions of "[[The Ballad of Chevy Chase]]" sometimes associated with the Lancashire-born sixteenth-century minstrel [[Richard Sheale]].<ref name="Gregory2006">D. Gregory, '"The Songs of the People for Me": The Victorian Rediscovery of Lancashire Vernacular Song', ''Canadian Folk Music/Musique folklorique canadienne'', 40 (2006), pp. 12-21.</ref>
[[File:Illustration to the ballad Young Beckie from "Some British Ballads".jpg|right|thumb|Illustration by [[Arthur Rackham]] to ''[[Young Bekie]].'']]
It has been suggested that the increasing interest in traditional popular ballads during the eighteenth century was prompted by social issues such as the enclosure movement as many of the ballads deal with themes concerning rural laborers.<ref>Robin Ganev,''Songs of Protest, Songs of Love: Popular Ballads in 18th Century Britain''</ref> James Davey has suggested that the common themes of sailing and naval battles may also have prompted the use (at least in England) of popular ballads as naval recruitment tools.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://enterprise.gre.ac.uk/news/articles/2011/gmi-ballads-talk |title=Talk examines ballads and naval recruitment in the 18th century - 2011 News - Articles - News - University of Greenwich Business and Enterprise |access-date=2012-08-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121024235716/http://enterprise.gre.ac.uk/news/articles/2011/gmi-ballads-talk |archive-date=2012-10-24 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Key work on the traditional ballad was undertaken in the late 19th century in Denmark by [[Svend Grundtvig]] and for England and Scotland by the Harvard professor [[Francis James Child]].<ref name="N. Bold, 1979 p. 5"/> They attempted to record and classify all the known ballads and variants in their chosen regions. Since Child died before writing a commentary on his work it is uncertain exactly how and why he differentiated the 305 ballads printed that would be published as ''[[The English and Scottish Popular Ballads]]''.<ref>T. A. Green, ''Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Customs, Tales, Music, and Art'' (ABC-CLIO, 1997), p. 352.</ref> There have been many different and contradictory attempts to classify traditional ballads by theme, but commonly identified types are the religious, supernatural, tragic, love ballads, historic, legendary and humorous.<ref name=Houseman1952/> The traditional form and content of the ballad were modified to form the basis for twenty-three bawdy pornographic ballads that appeared in the underground Victorian magazine ''[[The Pearl (magazine)|The Pearl]]'', which ran for eighteen issues between 1879 and 1880. Unlike the traditional ballad, these obscene ballads aggressively mocked sentimental nostalgia and local lore.<ref>Thomas J. Joudrey, "Against Communal Nostalgia: Reconstructing Sociality in the Pornographic Ballad," ''Victorian Poetry'' 54.4 (2017).</ref>

===Broadsides===
{{Main article|Broadside (music)}}
[[File:Tragical Ballad 18th century.png|right|thumb|An 18th-century broadside ballad: ''The tragical ballad: or, the lady who fell in love with her serving-man''.]]
Broadside ballads (also known as 'broadsheet', 'stall', 'vulgar' or 'come all ye' ballads) were a product of the development of cheap print in the 16th century. They were generally printed on one side of a medium to large sheet of poor quality paper. In the first half of the 17th century, they were printed in black-letter or gothic type and included multiple, eye-catching illustrations, a popular tune title, as well as an alluring poem.<ref>E. Nebeker, [http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/page/heyday-of-the-broadside-ballad "The Heyday of the Broadside Ballad"], ''English Broadside Ballad Archive, University of California-Santa Barbara'', retrieved 15 August 2011.</ref> By the 18th century, they were printed in white letter or roman type and often without much decoration (as well as tune title). These later sheets could include many individual songs, which would be cut apart and sold individually as "slip songs." Alternatively, they might be folded to make small cheap books or "chapbooks" which often drew on ballad stories.<ref>G. Newman and L. E. Brown, ''Britain in the Hanoverian Age, 1714–1837: An Encyclopedia'' (Taylor & Francis, 1997), pp. 39-40.</ref> They were produced in huge numbers, with over 400,000 being sold in England annually by the 1660s.<ref>B. Capp, 'Popular literature', in B. Reay, ed., ''Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England'' (Routledge, 1985), p. 199.</ref> Tessa Watt estimates the number of copies sold may have been in the millions.<ref>T. Watt, ''Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640'' (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 11.</ref> Many were sold by travelling [[chapmen]] in city streets or at fairs.<ref>M. Spufford, ''Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England'' (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 111-28.</ref> The subject matter varied from what has been defined as the traditional ballad, although many traditional ballads were printed as broadsides. Among the topics were love, marriage, religion, drinking-songs, legends, and early journalism, which included disasters, political events and signs, wonders and prodigies.<ref>B. Capp, 'Popular literature', in B. Reay, ed., ''Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England'' (Routledge, 1985), p. 204.</ref>

===Literary ballads===
Literary or lyrical ballads grew out of an increasing interest in the ballad form among social elites and intellectuals, particularly in the [[Romantic movement]] from the later 18th century. Respected literary figures [[Robert Burns]] and [[Walter Scott]] in Scotland collected and wrote their own ballads. Similarly in England [[William Wordsworth]] and [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] produced a collection of ''[[Lyrical Ballads]]'' in 1798 that included Coleridge's ''[[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner]]''. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats were attracted to the simple and natural style of these folk ballads and tried to imitate it.<ref name="British Literature pg 610" /> At the same time in Germany [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]] cooperated with [[Friedrich Schiller|Schiller]] on a series of ballads, some of which were later set to music by [[Franz Schubert|Schubert]].<ref>J. R. Williams, ''The Life of Goethe'' (Blackwell Publishing, 2001), pp. 106-8.</ref> Later important examples of the poetic form included Rudyard Kipling's "[[Barrack-Room Ballads]]" (1892–6) and [[Oscar Wilde]]'s ''[[The Ballad of Reading Gaol]]'' (1897).<ref>S. Ledger, S. McCracken, ''Cultural Politics at the Fin de Siècle'' (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 152.</ref>