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Conventions of a ballad
Ballads have strong associations with childhood: much children's poetry comes in ballad form, and
English poets traditionally associated ballads with their national childhood as well
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Ballads are meant to be song-like and to remind readers
of oral poetry--of parents singing to children, for instance, or of ancient poets reciting their verse to
a live audience
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" In that context, the word
describes a genre of "slow songs" in jazz or rock music
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I do not know how "ballad" acquired
that meaning as well as the older and still current one described here
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Some ballads, especially older traditional ballads, were composed for audiences
of non-specialist hearers or (later) readers
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When later poets choose to write
ballads, regardless of their intended audience, the choice of the ballad form generally implies a
similar emphasis on simple language
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•Stories
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•Ballad stanzas
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The first and third lines have four stresses,
while the second and fourth have three
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A ballad often has a refrain, a repeated section that divides segments of the story
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For a classic example of incremental repetition, see the first two lines of each
stanza in "Lord Randal
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As you might expect in a narrative genre, ballads often incorporate multiple characters
into their stories
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Writers of literary ballads, the
later poems that imitate oral ballads, sometimes play with this convention
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Ballad narrators usually do not speak in the first person (unless
speaking as a character in the story), and they often do not comment on their reactions to the
emotional content of the ballad

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