Of ballads and of bards

Not altogether surprisingly, let’s start from Alice’s adventures out there, behind the looking-glass. It is there that she encounters with Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They remind Alice of good manners and hold out hands but –

"Alice didn’t like to shake hands with either of them first, for fear of hurting the other one’s feelings; so, as the best way out of the difficulty, she took hold of both hands at once: the next moment they were dancing round in a ring. This seemed quite natural (she remembered afterwards), and she was not even surprised to hear music playing (…).

Then they let go of Alice’s hands, and stood looking at her for a minute: there was a rather awkward pause, as Alice didn’t know how to begin a conversation with people she had just been dancing with. ‘It would never do to say “How d’ye do?” now,’ she said to herself: ‘we seem to have got beyond that, somehow!’

‘I hope you’re not much tired?’ she said at last.

‘Nohow. And thank you Very much for asking,’ said Tweedledum.

'So much obliged!’ added Tweedledee. ‘You like poetry?’"

The above question might seem rather queer, especially when asked so early in the getting-acquainted process. On second thought, however, it is not altogether weird. What really is weird and queer is the poetry that comes next in the book, The Walrus and the Carpenter:

The sun was shining on the sea,

Shining with all his might:

He did his very best to make

The billows smooth and bright —

And this was odd, because it was

The middle or the night. (…)

The Walrus and the Carpenter

Walked on a mile or so,

And then they rested on a rock

Conveniently low:

And all the little Oysters stood

And waited in a row.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing — wax —

Of cabbages — and kings —

And why the sea is boiling hot —

and whether pigs have wings."

A perfect poem to start an acquaintance, isn't it? If you try to classify it, it’s easy: long and rhymed, with rather a strict structure. It is significant that poetry meant this sort of literature for Tweedledee. Paraphrasing Shakespeare, though it be nonsense, there is ballad in it!

2.1 The minstrelsy of medieval borders…

Let us now discuss the development of this very English jenre that dates far back into history, to the times of the Middle Ages. The word ballad is derived form the Latin "ballare" which means "to dance". Ballads were composed to be sung, not recited or read. The early English and Scottish ballads seem to have originated in the border district, on both sides of the Cheviot Hills which form the natural boundary between the two countries, in the Middle Ages.

The British "folk", "traditional", "popular" ballads were gathered in a monumental collection by Professor Francis J. Child in the 1890s. Child, who was a professor at Harvard, conducted a profound and sustained study of the various European balladries. His thick five-volume collection is the basic repository of the folk ballad in English. The term ballad may be used for any poem that is, or can be, sung, and that has regular stanzas. What is popular ballad then?

A somewhat unwieldy but inclusive definition describes the ballad as a short, traditional, impersonal narrative told in a song, transmitted orally from generation to generation, marked by its own structure and rhetoric and uninfluenced by literary conversation. Speaking about ballad structure, one should note that ballads focus on a single situation, usually a single scene. Events that lead up to this situation, no matter how important to the story, are only hurriedly, though firmly, sketched. Ballads are told in a peculiarly effective dramatic manner. We are not told about things happening; we are shown them happening. Ballads show no interest in the subtleties of character or in psychological motive-mongering. The narrator never moralizes and rarely allows his subjective attitude toward the action to intrude.

The language of ballads is seldom strikingly expressive. A limited stock of epithets, images, and descriptive terms does service for all the ballads. Traditional terms, pairings, and comparisons abound: my true-love, my hawks and my hounds, as red as blood. The ladies in ballads are always gay, knights gallant, swords royal, even in most tragic circumstances. We are not meant to linger on any of the descriptive details, or on any particular line. Rather, we let each recognized phrase add its bit to the mood or situation while we reserve our main attention for the pattern made by the story as it unfolds.The best ballads are molded by a high order of folk art. Consider Text 11.