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 were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of Great Britain and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages until the 19th century. They were widely used across Eur ...
ry collected from the
Anglo-Scottish border
The Anglo-Scottish border runs for between Marshall Meadows Bay on the east coast and the Solway Firth in the west, separating Scotland and England.
The Firth of Forth was the border between the Picto- Gaelic Kingdom of Alba and the Angli ...
. 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
Sir Thomas de Ercildoun, better remembered as Thomas the Rhymer (fl. c. 1220 – 1298), also known as Thomas Learmont or True Thomas, was a Scottish laird and reputed prophet from Earlston (then called "Erceldoune") in the Borders. Tho ...
" (also known as "True Thomas" or "Thomas of Erceldoune") and "
Tam Lin
Tam Lin, also known as Tamas-Lin, Tamlane, Tamlene, Tamlin, Tambling, Tomlin, Tam-Lien, Tam-a-Line, Tam-Lyn or Tam-Lane, is a character in the legendary ballad originating from the Scottish Borders.
History
The story of Tam Lin revolves around ...
".
Writings about
Some of the earliest known references (in
Middle Scots
Middle Scots was the Anglic language of Lowland Scotland in the period from 1450 to 1700. By the end of the 15th century, its phonology, orthography, accidence, syntax and vocabulary had diverged markedly from Early Scots, which was virtual ...
) to the ballads appeared in ''
The Complaynt of Scotland'' (1549).
Sir
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European literature, European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'' (18 ...
wrote about border ballads in ''
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
''Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border'' is an anthology of Border ballads, together with some from north-east Scotland and a few modern literary ballads, edited by Walter Scott. It was first published by Archibald Constable in Edinburgh in 1 ...
'', first published in 1802–03.
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 ...
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
is the colloquial name given to a collection of 305 ballads collected in the 19th century by Francis James Child and originally published in ten volumes between 1882 and 1898 under the title ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.''
The ba ...
References
Further reading
*
Pick, J.B. (1993), "The Border Ballads: How Many Worlds are There?", in ''The Great Shadow House: The Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction'', Polygon, Edinburgh, pp. 11 - 15,
{{DEFAULTSORT:Border Ballad
Anglo-Scottish border
*
English folk songs
Northumbrian folklore
Scottish Borders
Scottish folk songs
Scottish literature
Song forms
Traditional ballads