The Ballads From 1798 To Today's Modern Rebel Songs. A
brief history of ballads in Ireland and why they were
written to explain events taking place around the
country. The etymological sence of the word Ballad is
"Dancing Song". But this description is not entirely
acceptable for there are many more songs in use today
which we could not call Ballads, perhaps most ballads
were not composed to accompany a dance. A ballad is a
relatively short song with a short story line divided
into verses and s...(+)
The Ballads From 1798 To Today's Modern Rebel Songs. A
brief history of ballads in Ireland and why they were
written to explain events taking place around the
country. The etymological sence of the word Ballad is
"Dancing Song". But this description is not entirely
acceptable for there are many more songs in use today
which we could not call Ballads, perhaps most ballads
were not composed to accompany a dance. A ballad is a
relatively short song with a short story line divided
into verses and sung to a story like melody. Even this
definition, close as it may be is still completely
accurate. Some ballads extend to only a few lines,
while others run into hundreds. The Oxford Dictionary
says that a ballad is a simple spirited poem stanzas
narrating some popular story. This is much nearer to
the ballad as we know it, but still not completely
accurate, as the demand for stanzaic structure is
fulfilled only in the ballads of certain countries.
Three of the four principle types of European ballads
are not stanzaic at all. I am not churning out all this
to confuse, but to illustrate just how how difficult it
is to classify the "Ballad". Bearing the above in mind
we have, I feel no option but to use the term ballad in
it's widest sense as meaning any short traditional
narrative poem sung with or without accompaniment or
dance. I am sure there are still many who will not
agree with this definition.
The ballad evolved from the more ancient kind of song
narrative, the epic or hero song. Heroic epics were
once spread all over The Balkans. They are long songs,
some of them taken seven or eight hours for just one
song. There are likely to be hundred, even thousands of
lines long, telling of Godlike heroes in a whole chain
of complex adventures. They move in a supernatural
world of magic monsteres. In contrast the ballad is
more like a romantic short story, anything from fifty
to one hundred lines long telling of a single exploit,
involving lifesized figures in a realistic world, true
lovers and false ones, fearless soldiers and
treacherous neighbours. Nowadays the epic is found
mainly in Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. But all over
western and central Europe the old epics have faded
away and being replaced with the ballad.
If a map of Europe was drawn to show the migration of
ballads, it would be criss - crossed in every
direction, so that it is extremely difficult to say for
certain where the long grim hero songs first softened
into the gentler pieces, with the old solid block
recitative broken up into stanzas and fitted to
song-like tunes. The balled may first have seen the
light of day among French and Waloon pearants and
gradually spread outwards. Wherever there is no
difficult language or cultural frontier to surmount,
the traditional ballad is able to travel from mouth to
mouth. The dialect used for its performance takes on,
slowly, new characteristics as the song moves over the
ground until it reaches the limits of the linguistic
area. Then it is substituted not translation which
occurs and the stronger part of the ballad, either tune
or story survives. As the ballad moved outwards towards
Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia it became longer and
more full of fighting and magic, doubtless because the
effects of old hero epics lingered longer on the
fringes of the ballad area.
Source: A History Of Irish Ballads
(https://www.irish-folk-songs.com/a-history-of-irish-ba
llads.html).
Although originally written for Tradional Irish
instruments, I created this Interpretation of the
Ballad "Bonnie Kellswater" for Oboe & Celtic or Concert
(Pedal) Harp.
SHEET MUSIC