ballad
ballad,originally a song intended as an accompaniment to a dance; hence a light, simple song of any kind, or a popular song, often one attacking persons or institutions. Broadside ballads, such as those hawked by Autolycus in The Winter's Tale , were printed on one side of a single sheet (a ‘broadside’ or ‘broadsheet’) and sold in the streets or at fairs. In the relatively recent sense, now most widely used, a ballad is taken to be a single, spirited poem in short stanzas, in which some popular story is graphically narrated (e.g. Sir Patrick Spens ), and in this sense of the word the oral tradition is an essential element, though there has been much discussion as to the origin and composition of the old English ballads. In the great collection of F. J. Child , English and Scottish Popular Ballads (5 vols, 1882 – 98 ), the oldest ballad is Judas ( c. 1300 ), with an uncharacteristically...
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