Ballad Basics A ballad is a lively storytelling

Ballad Basics A ballad is a lively storytelling form of poetry.

• Ballads start quickly, without much introduction or narration, as in the famous opening of “Sir Patrick Spens”: The king sits in Dumfeling town Drinking the blude-reid wine: ‘O where will I get a good sailor To sail this ship of mine? ’ • Many questions are raised in just these four lines.

• Ballads often jump from scene to scene as they move from stanza to stanza, without much exposition or narrative to connect the events.

• Often, ballads use dialogue, rather than narration, to advance the plot.

• Ballads often feature repeated refrain-lines, which may be nonsense (“fol-de-rol-de-follyo”) or details that the poet returns to obsessively (“in this kingdom by the sea”).

• The narrator generally remains anonymous and unidentified, so that our focus is on the story rather than the story-teller.

The Ballad Stanza: Feel the Beat! • First: What’s an iamb? • Sam-I-Am & Will. I. Am – I do not like green eggs and ham – I do not like them, Sam-I-Am • Copy this phrase down in your notes and use scansion marks to demonstrate the stressed and unstressed syllables. • Let’s do it together on the board!

The Ballad Stanza: Feel the Beat! • • A ballad stanza in a poem Has lines as long as these. In measuring the lines, we find We get both fours and threes. – Use scansion marks to identify the stressed and unstressed syllables. – How many stressed syllables are there in each line? – This is known as “the ballad stanza”!

The Ballad Stanza – Feel the Beat • The famous ballad stanza – the Chevy Chase stanza: – God prosper long our noble king, – Our liffes and saftyes all! – A woefull hunting once there did – In Chevy Chase befall.

The Ballad Stanza – Feel the Beat! • The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle! • Use scansion marks to note stressed and unstressed syllables on your lyrics sheet. • Besides the form used (the ballad stanza) in what other ways is this song a ballad?

Homework • Listen to “Amazing Grace. ” • Use scansion marks to note stressed and unstressed syllables. (This should be very easy after today’s lesson!) • Write one to two paragraphs about how this song functions as a traditional ballad.