Facts about Ballads

Other types of ballads, including fairy ballads such as "Thomas the Rhymer," are often included in the category of border ballads.

Percy's publication of Reliques of Ancient Poetry and Harley's collections, such as The Bagford Ballads, were of great importance in the study of ballads.

Ballads have also been imitated in modern poetry, most notably by the Canadian ballads of Robert W. Service, in Rudyard Kipling's "Road to Mandalay" and in "Casey at the Bat."

Many ballads are referenced in scholarly works by their number in Child's compilation (see the Child Ballads).

Satirical royalist ballads and monarchism contributed to seventeenth century political discourse.

The American poet Carl Sandburg was influenced by ballads, and published a collection he had assembled as The American Songbag (1927).

Bishop Thomas Percy, 1st Earl of Oxford Robert Harley, Francis James Child, Sir Walter Scott, and James Hogg were early collectors and publishers of ballads from the oral tradition, broadsheets and previous anthologies.

Atmospheric ballads in operas were initiated in Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischьtz, Senta's ballad in Richard Wagner's Der fliegende Hollдnder, and the "old song" "Salce" that Desdemona sings in Giuseppe Verdi's Otello.

New ballads were written about current events like fires, the birth of monstrous animals, and so forth, particularly giving notoriety to certain names and places.

Many modern written musical ballads are in the repertory of American folk music.

Border ballads are a subgenre of folk ballads collected in the area along the English-Scottish border.

Casting directors often divide songs into two categories: "ballads" (slower or sentimental songs) and "up" tunes (faster or happier songs).

Literary ballads may then be set to music, as Franz Schubert's Der Erlkцnig, set to a literary ballad by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (see also Der Zauberlehrling).

Notable historical ballads include "The Battle of Otterburn," "The Hunting of Cheviot," and "The Ballad of Chevy Chase."

Broadsheet ballads, also known as broadside ballads, were inexpensively printed and hawked in English streets from the sixteenth century.

Literary ballads are those composed and written formally.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge signaled the populist intent of their first major work, Lyrical Ballads.

Some of the collectors also wrote new ballads.

Outlaw ballads include "Johnnie Armstrong," "Kinmont Willie," and "Jock o' the Side."