Ballad BasicsA 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 townDrinking the blude-reid wine:‘O where will I get a good sailorTo 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-folly-o”) 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.