Ballads
The Sensational
THREE DEAD SONS VISIT MOTHER FOR DINNER... SLIGHTED WOMAN SPURNS LOVER’S DEATHBED REQUEST... MAIDEN HEADED FOR GALLOWS; FAMILY REFUSES HELP. These aren’t the latest tabloid headlines or current soap opera summaries; they’re the plots of medieval ballads. In the Middle Ages, just as today, certain forms of popular entertainment tended toward the sensational.
Since ballads were the poetry of the people, just as popular music is today, their subjects were predictably popular—domestic tragedy, false love, true love, the absurdity of husband-wife relationships, and the supernatural. Unlike today’s music, the ballads were not copyrighted by a singer, but were passed down orally from singer to singer. Using a strong beat and repetition, the ballads were a gift of story passed from performer to performer, from generation to generation.
Quickwrite
Suppose a historian from the future were to analyze today’s popular songs. How would the historian describe the music you and your friends enjoy? What subjects dominate the songs? (Are popular songs sensational the way the ballads are?) What inferences would the historian draw about us and our culture from the analysis of the songs and the stories they tell? Record your thoughts on these pop-music questions.
Elements of Literature
The Refrain
In concerts today a singer may invite the audience to “join in on the chorus.” It’s probable that a single singer sang the narrative portions of a ballad while the audience joined in on the refrain. The use of the refrain contributed to the song’s rhythm and often reinforced its theme, but there was another practical reason for the refrain: It allowed the singer, who sang from memory and often improvised, time to think of the next verse.
A refrain is a repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines.
Background
The word ballad is originally derived from an Old French word meaning “dancing song.” Although the English ballads’ connection with dance has been lost, it is clear from their meter and their structure that the original ballads were composed to be sung to music.
The ballads as we know them today probably took their form in the fifteenth century, but they were not printed until three hundred years later when Sir Thomas Percy, Sir Walter Scott, and others traveled around the British Isles and collected them from the people who still sang them.
Ballads: Popular Poetry
Ballads come from an oral tradition, so there are no strict rules dictating their form. However, a number of characteristics have come to be associated with ballads, and every ballad reflects at least some of them: supernatural events; sensational, sordid, or tragic subject matter; a refrain; and the omission of details. The ballad singers also used some of the following conventions:
• incremental repetition, to build up suspense. A phrase or sentence is repeated with a new element added each time, until the climax is reached.
• a question-and-answer format, in which the facts of a story are gleaned little by little from the answers. Again, this device builds up suspense.
• conventional phrases, understood by listeners to have meaning beyond their literal ones. “Make my bed soon” in “Lord Randall” is an example. Whenever a character in a ballad asks someone to make his bed, or to make her bed narrow, it means that the speaker is preparing for death.
• a strong, simple beat, with verse forms that are relatively uncomplicated. Ballads were sung for a general, rather than an elitist, audience. Only later, in the era of so-called literary ballads (more sophisticated poems that artfully evoked the atmosphere of the originals), did the rhyme scheme
(abcb) and meter (a quatrain in which lines of four stresses alternate with lines of three stresses) of the ballad stanza become standard.
Literature and Pop Music
Ballads
American Folk and Country and Western Music
When English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish people left their homes to settle in America, the old ballads were part of their baggage. Some ballads have changed little since then. When researchers traveled through the southern Appalachian Mountains in the early 1900s to record the songs of the mountain people, they found them singing “John Randolph,” a ballad markedly similar to “Lord Randall.” On the other hand, “Streets of Laredo,” which tells the story of a cowboy dying of a gunshot wound, retains the remnants of its British ancestry only in the line, “Oh beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly.” The fife and drum refer to a British military funeral. Even country and folk ballads written in this century tend to repeat the subjects and themes of the old medieval ballads. Consider:
• ballads with supernatural elements, such as the country and western song “Phantom 309” about ghost truck drivers;
• ballads based on actual tragedies, such as the country and western song “Ballad of the Green Berets” from the Vietnam War era and the folk songs “Birmingham Sunday” from the civil rights struggle of the sixties and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” about a twentieth-century sea tragedy;
• ballads about domestic disasters, such as the country and western song “The Grand Tour,” about a singer who tours his home after his wife has left him.
Lord Randall
“O where hae ye been, Lord Randall, my son?
O where hae ye been, my handsome young man?”
“I hae been to the wild wood; mother, make my bed soon,
For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain wald lie down.”
5 “Where gat ye your dinner, Lord Randall, my son?
Where gat ye your dinner, my handsome young man?”
“I din’d wi’ my true-love; mother, make my bed soon,
For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain wald lie down.”
“What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randall, my son?
10 What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man?”
“I gat eels boil’d in broo; mother, make my bed soon,
For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain wald lie down.”
“What became of your bloodhounds, Lord Randall, my son?
What became of your bloodhounds, my handsome young man?”
15 “O they swell’d and they died; mother, make my bed soon,
For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain wald lie down.”
“O I fear ye are poison’d, Lord Randall, my son!
O I fear ye are poison’d, my handsome young man!”
“O yes! I am poison’d; mother, make my bed soon,
20 For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wald lie down.”
Edward, Edward
“Why does your brand sae drop
wi’ blude,
Edward, Edward?
Why does your brand sae drop wi’ blude,
And why sae sad gang ye, O?”—
5 “O I hae kill’d my hawk sae
gude,
Mither,
mither;
O I hae kill’d my hawk sae gude,
And I had nae mair but he, O.”
“Your hawk’s blude was never sae red,
10 Edward, Edward;
Your hawk’s blude was never sae red,
My dear son, I tell thee, O.”—
“O I hae kill’d my red-roan steed,
Mither, mither;
15 O I hae kill’d my red-roan steed,
That erst was sae fair and free, O.”
“Your steed was auld, and ye hae got mair,
Edward, Edward;
Your steed was auld, and ye hae got mair;
20 Some other dule ye dree, O.”—
“O I hae kill’d my father dear,
Mither, mither;
O I hae kill’d my father dear,
Alas, and wae is me, O!”
25 “And whatten penance will ye dree for that,
Edward, Edward?
Whatten penance will ye dree for that?
My dear son, now tell me, O.”—
“I’ll set my feet in yonder boat,
30 Mither, mither;
I’ll set my feet in yonder boat,
And I’ll fare over the sea, O.”
Get Up and Bar the Door
It fell about the Martinmas time,
And a gay time it was then,
When our goodwife got puddings to make,
And she’s boild them in the pan.
5 The wind sae cauld blew south and north,
And blew into the floor;
Quoth our goodman to our goodwife,
“Gae out and bar the door.”
“My hand is in my hussyfskap,
10 Goodman, as ye may see;
An it should nae be barrd this hundred year,
It’s no be barrd for me.”
They made a paction tween them twa,
They made it firm and sure,
15 That the first word whaeer should speak,
Should rise and bar the door.
Then by there came two gentlemen,
At twelve o clock at night,
And they could neither see house nor hall,
20 Nor coal nor candle-light.
“Now whether is this a rich man’s house,
Or whether it is a poor?”
But neer a word ane o them speak,
For barring of the door.
25 And first they ate the white puddings,
And then they ate the black;
Tho muckle thought the goodwife to hersel,
Yet neer a word she spake.
Then said the one unto the other,
30 “Here, man, tak ye my knife;
Do ye tak aff the auld man’s beard,
And I’ll kiss the goodwife.”
“But there’s nae water in the house,
And what shall we do than?”
35 “What ails ye at the
pudding-broo,
That boils into the pan?”
O up then started our goodman,
An angry man was he:
“Will ye kiss my wife before my een,
40 And scad me wi pudding-bree?”
Then up and started our goodwife,
Gied three skips on the floor:
“Goodman, you’ve spoken the foremost word,
Get up and bar the door.”
Frankie and Johnny
words by Boyd Bunch
Frankie and Johnny were lovers
Oh, Lordy, how they could love.
They swore to be true to each other,
True as the stars above.
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
Frankie she was a good woman
As everybody knows.
Spent a hundred dollars
Just to buy her man some clothes.
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
Frankie went down to the corner
Just for a bucket of beer.
Said: “Mr. Bartender,
Has my loving Johnny been here?
He was my man, but he’s a-doing me wrong.”
“Now I don’t want to tell you no stories,
And I don’t want to tell you no lies.
I saw your man about an hour ago
With a gal named Nellie Bligh.
He was your man, but he’s a-doing you wrong.”
Frankie she went down to the hotel,
Didn’t go there for fun.
Underneath her kimono
She carried a forty-four gun.
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
Frankie looked over the transom
To see what she could spy.
There sat Johnny on the sofa
Just loving up Nellie Bligh.
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
Frankie got down from that high stool,
She didn’t want to see no more.
Rooty-toot-toot three times she shot
Right through that hardwood door.
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
Now the first time that Frankie shot Johnny,
He let out an awful yell.
Second time she shot him
There was a new man’s face in hell.
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
“Oh, roll me over easy,
Roll me over slow.
Roll me over on the right side,
For the left side hurts me so.”
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
Sixteen rubber-tired carriages
Sixteen rubber-tired hacks
They take poor Johnny to the graveyard—
They ain’t gonna bring him back.
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
Frankie looked out of the jailhouse
To see what she could see.
All she could hear was a two-string bow
Crying, “Nearer my God to thee.”
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
Frankie she said to the sheriff,
“What do you reckon they’ll do?”
Sheriff he said, “Frankie,
It’s the electric chair for you.”
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
This story has no moral.
This story has no end.
This story only goes to show
That there ain’t no good in men.
He was her man, but he was doing her wrong.
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