|
|
Ballad Poems: Ballad Writing
Ballad Writing
Example Ballads
Ballad Writing How-To
Ballad
Form in Detail
Meter
Meter is the rhythm of a ballad. It describes where the emphasis is
placed--what words are emphasized, and what words aren't. Almost all ballads
have verses consisting of four or six lines, and use one of two basic Meters:
4-3-4-3 or 4-4-4-4. Here's an example of the 4-3-4-3 meter. Try speaking the
verse out loud:
Haud your tongue, ye auld fac'd knight,
Some ill death may ye dee!
Father my bairn on whom I will,
I'll father nane on thee.
There are four emphasized words in the first and third lines, and three
emphasized words in the second and fourth lines--in short, 4-3-4-3.
Here's an example of the 4-4-4-4 meter, where all lines have four
emphasized words:
I am a man upon the land
I am a silkie on the sea
and when I'm far and far frae land
my home it is in Sule Skerry.
If you look back through the examples shown in the previous sections, you'll
see that most of them fall into one of the above meters. If you can't figure
out what meter a ballad is in, try speaking it out loud and listening to the
rhythm of your speech.
An important thing to note about ballads, however, is that few of them have
absolutely perfect meter in all of the verses. Almost every ballad has a verse
with one syllable more or less. In Kempowyne,
which falls roughly under the 4-4-4-4 meter, a number of lines contain one or
two syllables more or less than they should.
Perfect meter isn't essential; what is important is that the meter
work with the music. Many ballads which sound rather awkward when they're
spoken sound beautiful when set to their proper tunes; the rhythm of the words
compliments the movement of the tune so that you don't notice any
"imperfections" in the meter.
Older ballads tend more towards the 4-4-4-4 meter, while more of the later
period ones have the 4-3-4-3 meter.
Top of Page
Many of the older ballads include this chorus, or "burden", in
each verse, like the example above contains. One of the very oldest ballads,
King Orfeo,
dated to the late 1400s, uses this type of rhyme.
In the second type, aabb, the first and second lines rhyme with
eachother, as do the third and the fourth lines. For example:
As I was walking al alane
I saw twa corbies makin' mane
the tane untae the tither did say
where shall we gang and dine the day?
It's possible that this type of ballad evolved from the first: the burden
was dropped, and two verses compressed into one. Hind
Horn is another example of this type of rhyme structure.
The third type of rhyme, abcb, is the most common type of rhyme
found in Child's ballads. In this rhyme scheme, only the second and fourth
lines rhyme:
Her breath was strang, her hair was lang
And twisted twice about the tree
And with a swing she came about
"Come to Craigy's sea and kiss with me"
This type of rhyme is the easiest; there's only one pair of matching words
to worry about per verse rather than two, which gives you more freedom in
writing the verse content.
Ballad makers weren't picky about their rhymes. Less than perfect rhyme
combinations such as again/ten, blame/nane, mair/before, king/nane,
wrong/won, and pap/that abound in ballads. In fact, a ballad with perfect
rhymes is automatically suspect; as balladry was originally an oral
tradition, and dialects varied widely, the words didn't necessarily sound
like their written-down version. A singer could make even the most unlikly
of rhymes work well.
In addition, many ballads rhyme a word with itself:
And while your body it is on
Drawn shall your blood never be
But if you touch me tail or fin
I swear my brand your death will be
Top of Page
Repetition
Repetition can be found in all ballads, in one form or another.
- The oldest type of repetition is the repetition of entire verses, with
only slight changes made to each one. Many of the earliest extant ballads
use this type of repetition, lending weight to Hodgart's theory that ballads
evolved from choral dance songs (check out The Ballads by MJC Hodgart
for more on this theory.)
The Maid on the Gallows is the most mind-numbingly repetitious one to be
found; Babylon
and Lord Randal
also use this type of repetition (to much better effect). Even in later
ballads that aren't composed entirely of repeated verses, one can often find
examples of this in miniature:
O still my bairn, nourice,
O still him wi' the pap!
He winna still, lady,
for this nor for that.
O still my bairn, nourice,
Oh still him wi' the bell!
He winna stil, lady,
till ye come down yoursel.
This type of repetition is a good way of building tension within a ballad as
you build toward a climax, although it can become tiresome if overused.
Another common type of repetition used in ballads is
"question/answer" repetition. The two verses cited above are a
good example of this. This type of repetition is found in a great number of
ballads; indeed, some, like "The Maid on the Gallows", consist of
nothing else. The ballad Edward
uses this question and answer routine to great effect, and their are a great
many ballads that contain at least one example of this.
Burdens, or choruses used in each verse, are a third common type of
repetition used in ballads. With burdens, the first and third lines of a
verse rhyme, while the second and fourth line are the same for all verses:
There were twa sisters sat in a bow'r
Binnorie, O Binnorie
There cam a knight to be their wooer.
By the bonnie mill-dams of Binnorie.
He courted the eldest wi' glove and ring
Binnorie, O Binnorie
But he lo'ed the youngest aboon a'thing.
By the bonnie mill-dams of Binnorie.
As a rule, of thumb, the older the ballad, the more repetition is
involved. Many ballads use more than one type of repetition.
Top of Page
Vocabulary
As many of the ballads we have today were taken down from Scottish singers, a
great number of them are in scottish dialect. This dialect can be rather
overwhelmingly strong (>Edward)
or can be so slight as to seem nonexistent (Lord
Randal), depending on the singer and the transcriber of the song.
Many words are English, spelled as the Scots would pronounce them: "wae"
instead of "woe", "doon" instead of "down",
"ane" for "one", "mair", "ta'en" and
"ye" for "more", "taken" and "you".
This is one of the easier ways to "balladize" a song, though care
should be taken not to overdo it; speaking ballads out loud and listening to
recordings (preferably by Scottish performers, if you can find them) is a good
way to get the sound down.
There are also a good number of peculiarly Scottish words to be found in
ballads, border ballads especially. "Bairn", "dule",
"ken", and "bonnie" are four of the better known ones;
there are many others. Unless you're quite familiar with them, it's best not
to overload a ballad with them. It can end up sounding awkward (and make it
harder for a modern audience to understand.) Again, the best way to get the
hang of using Scottish words is to read and listen to the ballads and learn
how they're used.
Most transcribers of ballads would readily agree with Andrew Jackson's
famous statement: "It's a poor man who can think of only one way to spell
a word." Spelling in ballads is iffy at best; words were, for the most
part, written down the way they sounded. Sometimes the same word appears in
two or even three different spellings. As ballads are meant to sung rather
than read, spelling isn't of great importance; if you're going for the
"look" of a period ballad, however, perfect spelling is a giveaway
of modern origin.
The same goes for grammar, which is sacrificed freely for the sake of meter,
rhyme and verse form:
I got it not by sea, nor got it by land
Nor got I it on a dead man's hand
But I got it at my wooing gay
And I'll gie't you on your wedding day
Top of Page
Structure
Most of the ballads that have survived to the present day can be divided into
verses of four lines. This number can vary--sometimes a 6 or 8 line verse is
inserted into the ballad (Tam
Lin).
As mentioned above, the science of ballad writing was not an exact one. One
old scottish woman interviewed around the turn of the 20th century said that
as long as the content remained the same, small words and phrases could be
changed with impunity.
As balladry was originally an oral tradition, the use of traditional motifs
and phrases was heavily relied upon to "flesh out" a ballad story.
In a process that has often been compared to Homer's poetic technique and that
of other classical poets, the singer had a number of stock
phrases--"grassy green", "milk-white steed", "massy
gold", "maiden fair", "and an angry man was he,"
"silk so fine", to name but a few--to use when singing a ballad. If
he or she forgot the exact wording of a certain line and it didn't include any
action important to the ballad, a stock phrase could easily be slipped in.
This process was seen at work by collectors of ballads in Scotland at the end
of the last century; two people might give them the same ballad with slight
differences; the gist and content were roughly the same, and much of the
different material consisted of stock phrases.
A curious thing to note about some ballads--especially the later ones-- is
that much of the essential action occurs in the non-rhyming lines, which makes
on the spot improvisation easier. Though this is by no means a universal occurrence, it happens often enough to be noticeable if you look.
Ballads contain a lot of dialogue. Action is often described in the first
person: "As I was walking all alane..."; "Oh where have ye
been, my dearest dear"; "Quhy dois your brand sae drip wi' bluid",
etc. Even in ballads told from a more impersonal third person point of view,
dialogue is always included, usually between the two main characters. As
mentioned above in the section on Repetition, one
character and the other can speak in alternate verses, or one character will
say something in the first two lines of a verse and the other reply in the
second two lines. This standard alternation can also be a mnemonic aid. Lord
Randal and Edward are composed completely of alternating dialogue, and it can
also be found in the Demon Lover, Tam Lin, Lamkin, Cruel Mother, Binnorie, and
countless other ballads, as can the extensive use of pairs: pairs of matching
verses, an occurrence which happens twice, etc.
Another mnemonic aid is the pervasive use of threes in ballads. In Kempowyne,
the main character has to win three kisses from Dove Isabel. In Edward,
the mother asks her son three times why his sword is so bloody, and after
Edward states his intention to go into exile, she asks him what he intends to
(1.) Do with his property, (2.) Leave to his children and wife, and (3.) Leave
to his mother. In Babylon,
three sisters are given a life or death choice, and their fate is described in
3 verses apiece. Lord Wearie is gone three months in Lamkin,
and The Wife of
Usher's Well is visited by her three sons. Little
Sir Hugh's mother calls three times before her son replies. Such examples
are endless.
For discussion, Post on the Forum!
|