Subject matter
The supernatural
The finest of the ballads are deeply saturated in a mystical atmosphere imparted by the presence of magical appearances and apparatus. “The Wife of Usher’s Well” laments the death of her children so inconsolably that they return to her from the dead as revenants; “Willie’s Lady” cannot be delivered of her child because of her wicked mother-in-law’s spells, an enchantment broken by a beneficent household spirit; “The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry” begets upon an “earthly” woman a son, who, on attaining maturity, joins his seal father in the sea, there shortly to be killed by his mother’s human husband; “Kemp Owyne” disenchants a bespelled maiden by kissing her despite her bad breath and savage looks. An encounter between a demon and a maiden occurs in “Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight,” the English counterpart of the ballads known to the Dutch-Flemish as “Herr Halewijn,” to Germans as “Ulinger,” to Scandinavians as “Kvindemorderen” and to the French as “Renaud le Tueur de Femme.” In “The House Carpenter,” a former lover (a demon in disguise) persuades a wife to forsake husband and children and come away with him, a fatal decision as it turns out. In American and in late British tradition the supernatural tends to get worked out of the ballads by being rationalized: instead of the ghost of his jilted sweetheart appearing to Sweet William of “Fair Margaret and Sweet William” as he lies in bed with his bride, it is rather the dead girl’s image in a dream that kindles his fatal remorse. In addition to those ballads that turn on a supernatural occurrence, casual supernatural elements are found all through balladry.
Romantic tragedies
The separation of lovers through a misunderstanding or the opposition of relatives is perhaps the commonest ballad story. “Barbara Allen” is typical: Barbara cruelly spurns her lover because of an unintentional slight; he dies of lovesickness, she of remorse. The Freudian paradigm operates rigidly in ballads: fathers oppose the suitors of their daughters, mothers the sweethearts of their sons. Thus, “The Douglas Tragedy”—the Danish “Ribold and Guldborg”—occurs when an eloping couple is overtaken by the girl’s father and brothers or “Lady Maisry,” pregnant by an English lord, is burned by her fanatically Scottish brother. Incest, frequent in ballads recorded before 1800 (“Lizie Wan,” “The Bonny Hind”), is shunned by modern tradition.
Romantic comedies
The outcome of a ballad love affair is not always, though usually, tragic. But even when true love is eventually rewarded, such ballad heroines as “The Maid Freed from the Gallows” and “Fair Annie,” among others, win through to happiness after such bitter trials that the price they pay seems too great. The course of romance runs hardly more smoothly in the many ballads, influenced by the cheap optimism of broadsides, where separated lovers meet without recognizing each other: the girl is told by the “stranger” of her lover’s defection or death: her ensuing grief convinces him of her sincere love: he proves his identity and takes the joyful girl to wife. “The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington” is a classic of the type. Later tradition occasionally foists happy endings upon romantic tragedies: in the American “Douglas Tragedy” the lover is not slain but instead gets the irate father at his mercy and extorts a dowry from him. With marriage a consummation so eagerly sought in ballads, it is ironical that the bulk of humorous ballads deal with shrewish wives (“The Wife Wrapped in Wether’s Skin”) or gullible cuckolds (“Our Goodman”).
Crime
Crime, and its punishment, is the theme of innumerable ballads: his sweetheart poisons “Lord Randal”; “Little Musgrave” is killed by Lord Barnard when he is discovered in bed with Lady Barnard, and the lady, too, is gorily dispatched. The murders of “Jim Fisk,” Johnny of “Frankie and Johnny,” and many other ballad victims are prompted by sexual jealousy. One particular variety of crime ballad, the “last goodnight”, represents itself falsely to be the contrite speech of a criminal as he mounts the scaffold to be executed. A version of “Mary Hamilton” takes this form, which was a broadside device widely adopted by the folk. “Tom Dooley” and “Charles Guiteau,” the scaffold confession of the assassin of Pres. James A. Garfield, are the best known American examples.
Medieval romance
Perhaps a dozen or so ballads derive from medieval romances. As in “Hind Horn” and “Thomas Rymer,” only the climactic scene is excerpted for the ballad. In general, ballads from romances have not worn well in tradition because of their unpalatable fabulous elements, which the modern folk apparently regard as childish. Thus, “Sir Lionel” becomes in America “Bangum and the Boar,” a humorous piece to amuse children. Heterodox apocryphal legends that circulated widely in the Middle Ages are the source of almost all religious ballads, notable “Judas,” “The Cherry-Tree Carol,” and “The Bitter Withy.” The distortion of biblical narrative is not peculiarly British: among others, the Russian ballads of Samson and Solomon, the Spanish “Pilgrim to Compostela” and the French and Catalonian ballads on the penance of Mary Magdalene reshape canonical stories radically.
Historical ballads
Historical ballads date mainly from the period 1550–750, though a few, like “The Battle of Otterburn,” celebrate events of an earlier date, in this case 1388. “The Hunting of the Cheviot,” recorded about the same time and dealing with the same campaign, is better known in a late broadside version called “Chevy Chase.” The details in historical ballads are usually incorrect as to fact because of faulty memory or partisan alterations, but they are valuable in reflecting folk attitudes toward the events they imperfectly report. For example, neither “The Death of Queen Jane,” about one of the wives of Henry VIII, nor “The Bonny Earl of Murray” is correct in key details, but they accurately express the popular mourning for these figures. By far the largest number of ballads that can be traced to historical occurrences have to do with local skirmishes and matters of regional rather than national importance. The troubled border between England and Scotland in the 16th and early 17th centuries furnished opportunities for intrepid displays of loyalty, courage, and cruelty that are chronicled in such dramatic ballads as “Edom o Gordon,” “The Fire of Frendraught,” “Johnny Cock,” “Johnie Armstrong,” and “Hobie Noble.” Closely analogous to these are Spanish romances such as “The Seven Princes of Lara,” on wars between Moors and Christians.