Download or read book The Book of Old English Ballads written by George Wharton Edwards and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Goethe, who saw so many things with such clearness of vision, brought out the charm of the popular ballad for readers of a later day in his remark that the value of these songs of the people is to be found in the fact that their motives are drawn directly from nature; and he added, that in the art of saying things compactly, uneducated men have greater skill than those who are educated. It is certainly true that no kind of verse is so completely out of the atmosphere of modern writing as the popular ballad. No other form of verse has, therefore, in so great a degree, the charm of freshness. In material, treatment, and spirit, these bat lads are set in sharp contrast with the poetry of the hour. They deal with historical events or incidents, with local traditions, with personal adventure or achievement. They are, almost without exception, entirely objective. Contemporary poetry is, on the other hand, very largely subjective; and even when it deals with events or incidents it invests them to such a degree with personal emotion and imagination, it so modifies and colours them with temperamental effects, that the resulting poem is much more a study of subjective conditions than a picture or drama of objective realities. This projection of the inward upon the outward world, in such a degree that the dividing line between the two is lost, is strikingly illustrated in Maeterlinck's plays. Nothing could be in sharper contrast, for instance, than the famous ballad of "The Hunting of the Cheviot" and Maeterlinck's "Princess Maleine." There is no atmosphere, in a strict use of the word, in the spirited and compact account of the famous contention between the Percies and the Douglases, of which Sir Philip Sidney said "that I found not my heart moved more than with a Trumpet." It is a breathless, rushing narrative of a swift succession of events, told with the most straight-forward simplicity. In the "Princess Maleine," on the other hand, the narrative is so charged with subjective feeling, the world in which the action takes place is so deeply tinged with lights that never rested on any actual landscape, that all sense of reality is lost. The play depends for its effect mainly upon atmosphere. Certain very definite impressions are produced with singular power, but there is no clear, clean stamping of occurrences on the mind. The imagination is skilfully awakened and made to do the work of observation. The note of the popular ballad is its objectivity; it not only takes us out of doors, but it also takes us out of the individual consciousness. The manner is entirely subordinated to the matter; the poet, if there was a poet in the case, obliterates himself. What we get is a definite report of events which have taken place, not a study of a man's mind nor an account of a man's feelings. The true balladist is never introspective; he is concerned not with himself but with his story. There is no self-disclosure in his song. To the mood of Senancour and Amiel he was a stranger. Neither he nor the men to whom he recited or sang would have understood that mood. They were primarily and unreflectively absorbed in the world outside of themselves. They saw far more than they meditated; they recorded far more than they moralized. The popular ballads are, as a rule, entirely free from didacticism in any form; that is one of the main sources of their unfailing charm. They show not only a childlike curiosity about the doings of the day and the things that befall men, but a childlike indifference to moral inference and justification. The bloodier the fray the better for ballad purposes; no one feels the necessity of apology either for ruthless aggression or for useless blood-letting; the scene is reported as it was presented to the eye of the spectator, not to his moralizing faculty. He is expected to see and to sing, not to scrutinize and meditate. In those rare cases in which a moral inference is drawn, it is always so obvious and elementary that it gives the impression of having been fastened on at the end of the song, in deference to ecclesiastical rather than popular feeling.

Download or read book The English Traditional Ballad written by David Atkinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ballads are a fascinating subject of study not least because of their endless variety. It is quite remarkable that ballads taken down or recorded from singers separated by centuries in time and by hundreds of kilometres in distance, should be both different and yet recognizably the same. In The English Traditional Ballad, David Atkinson examines the ways in which the body of ballads known in England make reference both to ballads from elsewhere and to other English folk songs. The book outlines current theoretical directions in ballad scholarship: structuralism, traditional referentiality, genre and context, print and oral transmission, and the theory of tradition and revival. These are combined to offer readers a method of approaching the central issue in ballad studies - the creation of meaning(s) out of ballad texts. Atkinson focuses on some of the most interesting problems in ballad studies: the 'wit-combat' in versions of The Unquiet Grave; variable perspectives in comic ballads about marriage; incest as a ballad theme; problems of feminine motivation in ballads like The Outlandish Knight and The Broomfield Hill; murder ballads and murder in other instances of early popular literature. Through discussion of these issues and themes in ballad texts, the book outlines a way of tracing tradition(s) in English balladry, while recognizing that ballad tradition is far from being simply chronological and linear.

Download or read book The Anglo Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts written by David Atkinson and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2014-03-12 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to combine contemporary debates in ballad studies with the insights of modern textual scholarship. Just like canonical literature and music, the ballad should not be seen as a uniquely authentic item inextricably tied to a documented source, but rather as an unstable structure subject to the vagaries of production, reception, and editing. Among the matters addressed are topics central to the subject, including ballad origins, oral and printed transmission, sound and writing, agency and editing, and textual and melodic indeterminacy and instability. While drawing on the time-honoured materials of ballad studies, the book offers a theoretical framework for the discipline to complement the largely ethnographic approach that has dominated in recent decades. Primarily directed at the community of ballad and folk song scholars, the book will be of interest to researchers in several adjacent fields, including folklore, oral literature, ethnomusicology, and textual scholarship.

Download or read book American Ballads and Folk Songs written by John A. Lomax and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-07-24 with total page 719 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music and lyrics for over 200 songs. John Henry, Goin' Home, Little Brown Jug, Alabama-Bound, Black Betty, The Hammer Song, Jesse James, Down in the Valley, The Ballad of Davy Crockett, and many more.

Download or read book The English and Scottish Popular Ballads written by Francis James Child and published by . This book was released on 1898 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Old English Ballads written by John Andrew Long and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book English and Scottish Popular Ballads written by Francis James Child and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Singing the News written by Jenni Hyde and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-15 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Singing the News is the first study to concentrate on sixteenth-century ballads, when there was no regular and reliable alternative means of finding out news and information. It is a highly readable and accessible account of the important role played by ballads in spreading news during a period when discussing politics was treason. The study provides a new analytical framework for understanding the ways in which balladeers spread their messages to the masses. Jenni Hyde focusses on the melody as much as the words, showing how music helped to shape the understanding of texts. Music provided an emotive soundtrack to words which helped to shape sixteenth-century understandings of gendered monarchy, heresy and the social cohesion of the commonwealth. By combining the study of ballads in manuscript and print with sources such as letters and state records, the study shows that when their topics edged too close to sedition, balladeers were more than capable of using sophisticated methods to disguise their true meaning in order to safeguard themselves and their audience, and above all to ensure that their news hit home.

Download or read book Old English Ballads 1553 1625 written by Hyder Edward Rollins and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Old English Ballads and Folk Songs written by William Dallam Armes and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs written by Julia Bishop and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-06-07 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the Spectator's Books of the Year 2012 'Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain For we've received orders for to sail for old England But we hope in a short while to see you again' One of the great English popular art forms, the folk song can be painful, satirical, erotic, dramatic, rueful or funny. They have thrived when sung on a whim to a handful of friends in a pub; they have bewitched generations of English composers who have set them for everything from solo violin to full orchestra; they are sung in concerts, festivals, weddings, funerals and with nobody to hear but the singer. This magical new collection brings together all the classic folk songs as well as many lesser-known discoveries, complete with music and annotations on their original sources and meaning. Published in cooperation with the English Folk Dance and Song Society, it is a worthy successor to Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L.Lloyd's original Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. 'Her keen eye did glitter like the bright stars by night The robe she was wearing was costly and white Her bare neck was shaded with her long raven hair And they called her pretty Susan, the pride of Kildare' In association with EFDSS, the English Folk Dance and Song Society

Download or read book The Ballad and Oral Literature written by Joseph Harris and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Francis James Child, compiler and editor of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, established the scholarly study of folk ballads in the English-speaking world. His successors at Harvard University, notably George Lyman Kittredge, Milman Parry, and Albert B. Lord, discovered new ways of relating ideas about sung narrative to the study of epic poetry and what has come to be called - oral literature. In this volume, 16 scholars from Europe and the United States offer original essays in the spirit of these pioneers. The topics of their studies include well-known Child ballads in their British and American forms; aspects of the oral literatures of France, Ireland, Scandinavia, medieval England, ancient Greece, and modern Egypt; and recent literary ballads and popular songs. Many of the essays evince a concern with the theoretical underpinnings of the study of folklore and literature, orality and literacy; and as a whole the volume re-establishes the European ballad in the wider context of oral literature. Among the contributors are Albert B. Lord, Bengt R. Jonsson, Gregory Nagy, David Buchan, Vesteinn Olason, and Karl Reichl.

Download or read book Ballad Book written by Katharine Lee Bates and published by . This book was released on 1890 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Later English Broadside Ballads written by John Holloway and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2005-09 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lively, exciting, amusing - this collection of ballads reveal the bawdy, anarchic sub-culture of England before the Industrial Revolution. Drawn from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it demonstrates the great wealth and variety of the English broadside ballads during these periods. At this time political balladry was rife and Irish ballads began to be composed in English - their distinctive background giving them a unique range of poetry. Indeed, these ballads represent an extensive, varied and important area of English literature. Written, as the editors observe, 'to provide a moment in which listeners could enjoy verse, wit and song', they very much reflect the lively observation, love of detail and social awareness of the age of the novel. This volume includes 127 ballads, ranging from 'Admiral Benbow' and 'The Jolly Bacchanal' to 'The Bottle the Best Companion' and 'The Young Man's Fortune'. Reprinted from contemporary or near-contemporary broadsides in the Madden Collection at the University Library, Cambridge, the head and tail blocks, a distinguished feature of the original texts, are also reproduced for this edition. The introduction is designed to enable individuals to read the texts in perspective and with pleasure. The book further includes a select bibliography and an index of ballad titles. This book was first published in 1975.

Download or read book Old English Ballads and Folk Songs written by William Dallam Armes and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2018-01-14 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Old English Ballads and Folk Songs: Selected and Edited Das Volk dichtet on a rational basis. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads of the first (now made generally accessible by the publication by Houghton, Mifilin, and Company of the Cambridge edition under the editorial supervision of Mrs. Helen Child Sargent and Professor Kittredge) and The Beginnings of Poetry (the Macmillan Company) of the second are books that should be owned, read, and reread by every teacher of literature. And to my friend and colleague, Dr. Walter Morris Hart, whose extensive knowledge of ballads and ballad literature en abled him to give me many helpful suggestions, I grate fully express my obligations. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Download or read book The Roxburghe Ballads written by William Chappell and published by . This book was released on 1874 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book English Songs and Ballads written by Thomas William Hodgson Crosland and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: