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Border ballad

Song genre from the Anglo-Scottish border

Border ballad
Summary

Song genre from the Anglo-Scottish border

Scott]]'s ''[[Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border]]'' in the [[National Museum of Scotland

Border ballads are a group of songs in the long tradition of balladry collected from the Anglo-Scottish border. Like all traditional ballads, they were traditionally sung unaccompanied. There may be a repeating motif, but there is no "chorus" as in most popular songs. The supernatural is a common theme in border ballads, as are recountings of raids and battles.

Ballad types

The ballads belong to various groups of subjects, such as riding ballads like "Kinmont Willie"; historical ballads like "Sir Patrick Spens"; comic ballads like "Get Up and Bar the Door"; and those with supernatural themes including "Thomas the Rhymer" (also known as "True Thomas" or "Thomas of Erceldoune") and "Tam Lin".

Writings about

Some of the earliest known references (in Middle Scots) to the ballads appeared in The Complaynt of Scotland (1549). Sir Walter Scott wrote about border ballads in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, first published in 1802–03. A. L. Lloyd said of the ballads:

References

References

  1. Cohen, Anthony P.. (2000). "Signifying Identities: Anthropological Perspectives on Boundaries and Contested Values". Routledge.
  2. "Border ballads". Penguin.
  3. "Border ballads". Penguin.
  4. Lloyd, A. L.. (2008). "Folk Song in England". Faber and Faber.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

anglo-scottish-border border-ballads english-folk-songs northumbrian-folklore scottish-borders scottish-folk-songs scottish-literature song-forms traditional-ballads
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