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Border ballads are a group of songs in the long tradition of
ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or '' ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...
ry collected from the
Anglo-Scottish border The Anglo-Scottish border () is a border separating Scotland and England which runs for between Marshall Meadows Bay on the east coast and the Solway Firth in the west. The surrounding area is sometimes referred to as "the Borderlands". Th ...
. Like all traditional ballads, they were traditionally sung unaccompanied. There may be a repeating motif, but there is no "chorus" as in most popular songs. The supernatural is a common theme in border ballads, as are recountings of raids and battles.


Ballad types

The ballads belong to various groups of subjects, such as riding ballads like "Kinmont Willie"; historical ballads like " Sir Patrick Spens"; comic ballads like " Get Up and Bar the Door";''About this book'' - inside front cover of and those with supernatural themes including " Thomas the Rhymer" (also known as "True Thomas" or "Thomas of Erceldoune") and " Tam Lin".


Writings about

Some of the earliest known references (in Middle Scots) to the ballads appeared in ''
The Complaynt of Scotland ''The Complaynt of Scotland'' is a Scottish book printed in 1549 as propaganda during the war of the Rough Wooing against the Kingdom of England, and is an important work of the Scots language. Context and authorship The book was part of the wa ...
'' (1549). Sir Walter Scott wrote about border ballads in '' Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border'', first published in 1802–3.
A. L. Lloyd Albert Lancaster Lloyd (29 February 1908 – 29 September 1982),Eder, Bruce. (29 September 1982A. L. Lloyd - Music Biography, Credits and Discography AllMusic. Retrieved on 2013-02-24. usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English fo ...
said of the ballads:


See also

*
Child Ballads The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as '' ...
* List of the Child Ballads


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Border Ballad Anglo-Scottish border Border ballads English folk songs Northumbrian folklore Scottish Borders Scottish folk songs Song forms Traditional ballads