1.
Ballad
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A ballad /ˈbæləd/ is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally danced songs, Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of the British Isles from the later medieval period until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in the Americas, Australia, Ballads are 13 lines with an ABABBCBC form, consisting of couplets of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides, the form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century, the took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and is now often used for any love song. The ballad derives its name from medieval French dance songs or ballares, from which ballet is also derived, as a narrative song, their theme and function may originate from Scandinavian and Germanic traditions of storytelling that can be seen in poems such as Beowulf. Musically they were influenced by the Minnesinger, the earliest example of a recognizable ballad in form in England is Judas in a 13th-century manuscript. This means that the two words, ballad and ballet, are derived from the French language. Ballads were originally written to accompany dances, and so were composed in couplets with refrains in alternate lines and these refrains would have been sung by the dancers in time with the dance. Most northern and west European ballads are written in ballad stanzas or quatrains of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, known as ballad meter. Usually, only the second and fourth line of a quatrain are rhymed, there is considerable variation on this pattern in almost every respect, including length, number of lines and rhyming scheme, making the strict definition of a ballad extremely difficult. Ballads usually use the dialect of the people and are heavily influenced by the region in which they originate. Scottish ballads in particular are distinctively un-English, even showing some pre-Christian influences in the inclusion of elements such as the fairies in the Scottish ballad Tam Lin. The ballads do not have any known author or correct version, instead, having passed down mainly by oral tradition since the Middle Ages. The ballads remained a tradition until the increased interest in folk songs in the 18th century led collectors such as Bishop Thomas Percy to publish volumes of popular ballads. In all traditions most ballads are narrative in nature, with a story, often concise, and rely on imagery, rather than description. Themes concerning rural laborers and their sexuality are common, and there are many ballads based on the Robin Hood legend. Another common feature of ballads is repetition, sometimes of fourth lines in succeeding stanzas, as a refrain, sometimes of third and fourth lines of a stanza and sometimes of entire stanzas
2.
Child Ballads
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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 Childs studies of them were published as the 2, the tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s. There were also comprehensive ballad collections from other countries, Child modelled his work on Svend Grundtvigs Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, classifying and numbering the ballads and noting different versions, which were placed side by side to aid comparison. As a result, one Child number may cover several ballads, conversely, ballads classified separately may contain turns of phrase, and even entire verses, that are identical. The ballads vary in age, for instance, the manuscript of Judas dates to the thirteenth century, the majority of the ballads, however, date to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although some are claimed to have very ancient influences, only a handful can be traced to before 1600. Moreover, few of the tunes collected are as old as the words, nevertheless, Childs collection was far more comprehensive than any previous collection of ballads in English. Many of Childs ballads were obtained from printed broadsides, but he distinguished the traditional ballads that interested him from later broadside ballads. As Child died before writing a commentary on his work, it is exactly how and why he selected some ballads. Child Ballads are generally heavier and darker than is usual for ballads, on one extreme, some Child Ballads recount identifiable historical people, in known events, embellished for dramatic effect. On the other, some differ from fairy tales solely by their songs and in verse. A large part of the collection is about Robin Hood, some are about King Arthur, a few of the ballads are rather bawdy. The editorial history of Childs publication received a study by Mary Ellen Brown in 2011. In 1860, Child published a collection entitled English and Scottish Ballads, generally presenting just one variant of each ballad, via Little, Brown. However, as a scholarly edition this was superseded by his later, the first edition of Childs book was, once complete, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ed. by Francis James Child,5 vols. It was printed in one thousand copies, and actually issued in ten parts, the final title pages for each of the five volumes, printed in red and black, were issued with part 10. Part 10 actually emerged after Childs death, and was edited by George Lyman Kittredge, the book was reprinted, this time physically in three volumes, in 1957 by the New York-based Folklore Press, in association with the Pageant Book Company. It was reprinted again in 1965 in New York by Dover, this time with an essay by Walter Morris Hart entitled Professor Child, many Child Ballads have subsequently appeared in contemporary music recordings
3.
Rhyme scheme
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A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme, there are also more elaborate related forms, like the sestina – which requires repetition of exact words in a complex pattern. In English, highly repetitive rhyme schemes are unusual, even such schemes as the terza rima, used by Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy, have been considered too difficult for English. Alternate rhyme, ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH, ballade, Three stanzas of ABABBCBC followed by BCBC. Chant royal, FOUR stanzas of ababccddedE followed by either ddedE or ccddedE. Cinquain, A, B, A, B, B Clerihew, A, A, B, B Couplet, A, A, McCarron Couplet, AABBABCCDDCDEEFFEF a contemporary take on a classic rhyming pattern, introduced by the academic James McCarron. Creative Verse, A poem with the scheme of ABCD ACDC ACDC. Tanaga, traditional Tagalog tanaga is AAAA Terza rima, ABA BCB CDC, ending on YZY Z, YZY ZZ, or YZY ZYZ. Triplet, AAA, often repeating like the couplet, the Road Not Taken stanza, ABAAB as used in Robert Frosts The Road Not Taken, and in Glæde over Danmark by Poul Martin Møller. Villanelle, A1bA2 abA1 abA2 abA1 abA2 abA1A2, where A1, in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory all the A rhymes go, Theres no earthly way of knowing which direction we are going. There is no knowing where were rowing or which way the rivers flowing, tiny from Dinosaur Train also has her fish song with A rhymes that go like this, If I could wish for just one dish My greatest wish would be more fish. Rather than relying on end rhymes, raps rhyme schemes can have rhymes placed anywhere in the bars of music to create a structure. Rap verses can also employ extra rhymes, which do not structure the verse like the rhyme schemes. The number of different possible rhyme schemes for a poem is given by the Bell numbers. There are five different rhyme schemes for a poem, AAA, AAB, ABA, ABB. The number of schemes in which all lines rhyme with at least one other line is given by the numbers 0,1,1,4,11,41,162,715,3425,17722. When n =4, we can see that there must be four rhyming schemes in every line rhymes with at least one other. These are AABB, ABAB, ABBA, and AAAA, both of these sequences of numbers may be found on either side of an augmented version of the Bell triangle
4.
Quatrain
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A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines. Michel de Nostredame used the form to deliver his famous prophecies in the 16th century. There are fifteen possible rhyme schemes, but the most traditional and common are, AAAA, ABAB, the Rubai form of rhymed quatrain was favored by Omar Khayyám, among others. This work was an inspiration for Edward FitzGeralds Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The rubai was a particularly widespread form, the form rubaiyat reflects the plural. The Midnight Songs poetry form is from Fourth Century China, consisting of regular five-character lines, the person matter involves the personal thoughts and feelings of a courtesan during the four seasons, into which the quatrains are individually assigned. Shairi is an AAAA rhyming form used mainly in The Knight in the Panthers Skin, the Shichigon-zekku form used on Classical Chinese poetry and Japanese poetry. This type of quatrain uses a seven characters length of line, both rhyme and rhythm are key elements, although the former is not restricted to falling at the end of the phrase. The thirty syllable, Celtic verse form Englyn from the Welsh language is another interesting variation of the quatrain, bell number Combination Enclosed rhyme Rhyme scheme http, //www. uni. edu/~gotera/CraftOfPoetry/quatrain. html
5.
Thomas Percy (bishop of Dromore)
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Thomas Percy was Bishop of Dromore, County Down, Ireland. Before being made bishop, he was chaplain to George III and he graduated in 1750 and proceeded M. A. in 1753. In 1759 he married Anne, daughter of Barton Gutterridge, Dr Percys first work, Hao Kiou Choaan, or The Pleasing History, was published in 1761. This is a revised and annotated version of a manuscript translation of the Haoqiu zhuan. The following year, he published a collection of sinological essays entitled Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the Chinese. In 1763, he published Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, translated from the Icelandic, the same year, he also edited the Earl of Surreys poems with an essay on early blank verse, translated the Song of Solomon, and published a key to the New Testament. His Northern Antiquities is a translation from the French of Paul Henri Mallet and his edition of the Household Book of the Earl of Northumberland is of the greatest value for the illustrations of domestic life in England at that period. These works are of little estimation when compared with the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, in the 1760s, he obtained a manuscript of ballads from a source in Northumberland. He had in mind the idea of writing a history of the Percy family of the peerage and he had sought out old tales from near Alnwick, the ancestral home of the Northumberland Percy family, and he had come across many ballad tales. In 1763, Percy, aiming for the market that Ossian had opened for ancient poetry, published Five Pieces of Runic Poetry from Icelandic, Percy was a friend of Samuel Johnson, Joseph and Thomas Warton, and James Boswell. In 1764, Dr Johnson and others encouraged Percy to preserve the poetry he was finding at home, Percy therefore took the ballad material he had from his folio and began searching for more ballads, in particular. He wanted to collect material from the areas, near Scotland. In 1765, he published the Reliques to great success, appointed a chaplain to the king in 1769, Percy was formally admitted to Emmanuel College, Cambridge that year, and received a doctorate of divinity from Cambridge in 1770. Combining the vogue for the Churchyard Poets and the ballad vogue that he himself had set in motion, Samuel Johnson famously composed three ex tempore parodies of this verse in the 1780s. He then demonstrated, The tender infant meek and mild Fell down upon a stone, Thomas Percy was angered by the parody, but Hester Thrale says that he soon came to his senses and realized that Johnson was satirizing the form, and not the poem. Soon after, he said, I put my hat upon my head And went into the strand, there I met another man Whose hat was in his hand. This extemporized parody was written down by Boswell and others and it may have been aimed less at Percy than at the ballads that were then appearing nearly daily on every subject. Percy carried out most of the work for which he is now remembered at Easton Maudit
6.
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
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The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry is a collection of ballads and popular songs collected by Bishop Thomas Percy and published in 1765. The basis of the work was the manuscript became known as the Percy Folio. Percy found the folio in the house of his friend Humphrey Pitt of Shifnal and it was on the floor, and Pitts maid had been using the leaves to light fires. Once rescued, Percy would use just forty-five of the ballads in the folio for his book, other sources were the Pepys Library of broadside ballads collected by Samuel Pepys and Collection of Old Ballads published in 1723, possibly by Ambrose Philips. Bishop Percy was encouraged to publish the work by his friends Samuel Johnson and the poet William Shenstone, Percy did not treat the folio nor the texts in it with the scrupulous care expected of a modern editor of manuscripts. He wrote his own notes directly on the pages, emended the rhymes. He was criticised for these actions even at the time, most notably by Joseph Ritson, the folio he worked from seems to have been written by a single copyist and errors such as pan and wale for wan and pale needed correcting. The Reliques contained one hundred and eighty ballads in three volumes with three sections in each, the claim that the book contained samples of ancient poetry was only partially correct. The last part of volume was given over to more contemporary works—often less than a hundred years old—included to stress the continuing tradition of the balladeer. The collection draws on the Folio and on other manuscript and printed sources and he made substantial amendments to the Folio text in collaboration with his friend the poet William Shenstone. The work was dedicated to Elizabeth Seymour, Duchess of Northumberland, Elizabeth was part of the Percy family and a descendant of Henry Percy, a protagonist of some of the early ballads. Bishop Thomas Percy also claimed to be connected to the family and although this may have been fanciful on his part, it did seem to help him secure his preferment. Percy also omitted some of the ballads from the Folio for fear of offending his noble patron. Ballad collections had appeared before but Percys Reliques seemed to capture the imagination like no other. Not only would it inspire poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth to compose their own ballads in imitation, it made the collecting. Sir Walter Scott was another writer inspired by reading the Reliques in his youth, the more rigorous scholarship of folklorists would eventually supersede Percys work, most notably in Francis James Childs Child Ballads, but Percy gave impetus to the whole subject. The book is credited, in part, with changing the prevailing literary movement of the 18th century, Neo-Classicism. The classicist Augustans took as their model the epic hexameters of Virgils Aeneid, the Reliques highlighted the traditions and folklore of England seen as simpler and less artificial
7.
Romantic poetry
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Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Although many stress the notion of spontaneity in Romantic poetry, the movement was greatly concerned with the difficulty of composition. Indeed, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another prominent English Romantic poet and critic, Romantic poetry contrasts with neoclassical poetry, which was the poetry of intellect and reason, while romantic poetry is more the product of emotion. Romantic poetry at the beginning of the century was a reaction against the set standards. According to William J. ” Belief in the importance of the imagination is a feature of romantic poets such as John Keats, Samuel Coleridge. Keats said, “I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Hearts affections, the secret of great art, Blake claimed, is the capacity to imagine. To define imagination, in his poem Auguries of Innocence, Blake said, To see a world in a grain of sand, And heaven in a wild flower, love for nature is another important feature of romantic poetry, as a source of inspiration. This poetry involves a relationship with nature and places. However, the romantic poets differed in their views about nature, wordsworth recognized nature as a living thing, teacher, god and everything. These feelings are developed and expressed in his epic poem The Prelude. In his poem The Tables Turn he writes, One impulse from the vernal wood Can teach you more of man, Of moral evil and good, Shelley was another nature poet, who believed that nature is a living thing and there is a union between nature and man. Wordsworth approaches nature philosophically, while Shelley emphasises the intellect, John Keats is another a lover of nature, but Coleridge differs from other romantic poets of his age, in that he has a realistic perspective on nature. He believes that nature is not the source of joy and pleasure, Coleridge believed that joy does not come from external nature, but that it emanates from the human heart. Melancholy occupies a prominent place in poetry, and is an important source of inspiration for the Romantic poets. In Ode to a Nightingale, Keats wrote, Romantic poetry was attracted to nostalgia and medievalism is another important characteristic of romantic poetry, especially in the works of John Keats and Coleridge. They were attracted to exotic, remote and obscure places, the world of classical Greece was important to the Romantics. John Keats poetry is full of allusions to the art, literature and culture of Greek, most of the romantic poets used [[supernaturalism|supernatural elements\\ in their poetry. Samuel Coleridge is the romantic poet in this regard
8.
William Wordsworth
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William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworths magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, before which it was known as the poem to Coleridge. Wordsworth was Britains Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850 and his sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. Wordsworths father was a representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections. He was frequently away from home on business, so the young William and his siblings had little involvement with him and remained distant from him until his death in 1783. However, he did encourage William in his reading, and in particular set him to commit to memory large portions of verse, including works by Milton, Shakespeare, William was also allowed to use his fathers library. William also spent time at his mothers house in Penrith, Cumberland, where he was exposed to the moors, but did not get along with his grandparents or his uncle. His hostile interactions with them distressed him to the point of contemplating suicide, Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and the Spectator, but little else. It was at the school in Penrith that he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary, after the death of his mother, in 1778, Wordsworths father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire and sent Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire. She and William did not meet again for nine years. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine and that same year he began attending St Johns College, Cambridge. He received his BA degree in 1791 and he returned to Hawkshead for the first two summers of his time at Cambridge, and often spent later holidays on walking tours, visiting places famous for the beauty of their landscape. In 1790 he went on a tour of Europe, during which he toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland. In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France and became enchanted with the Republican movement and he fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who in 1792 gave birth to their daughter Caroline. Financial problems and Britains tense relations with France forced him to return to England alone the following year. The circumstances of his return and his subsequent behaviour raised doubts as to his wish to marry Annette. With the Peace of Amiens again allowing travel to France, in 1802 Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy visited Annette, the purpose of the visit was to prepare Annette for the fact of his forthcoming marriage to Mary Hutchinson
9.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan and his critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He was an influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and American transcendentalism. Throughout his adult life Coleridge had crippling bouts of anxiety and depression, it has been speculated that he had bipolar disorder and he was physically unhealthy, which may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these conditions with laudanum, which fostered a lifelong opium addiction, Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the town of Ottery St Mary in Devon, England. He had previously been Master of Hugh Squiers School in South Molton, Devon, John Coleridge had three children by his first wife. Samuel was the youngest of ten by the Reverend Mr. Coleridges second wife, Anne Bowden, probably the daughter of John Bowden, Mayor of South Molton, Devon, Coleridge suggests that he took no pleasure in boyish sports but instead read incessantly and played by himself. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb, a schoolmate, in fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming Harp. Pen and ink, boy, you mean, oh aye. the cloister-pump, I suppose. Be this as it may, there was one custom of our masters and he would often permit our theme exercises. To accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over, throughout his life, Coleridge idealised his father as pious and innocent, while his relationship with his mother was more problematic. His childhood was characterised by attention seeking, which has linked to his dependent personality as an adult. He was rarely allowed to return home during the term. He later wrote of his loneliness at school in the poem Frost at Midnight, With unclosed lids, from 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1792, he won the Browne Gold Medal for an ode that he wrote on the slave trade, afterwards, he was rumoured to have had a bout of severe depression. His brothers arranged for his discharge a few months later under the reason of insanity and he was readmitted to Jesus College, at Jesus College, Coleridge was introduced to political and theological ideas then considered radical, including those of the poet Robert Southey. Coleridge joined Southey in a plan, soon abandoned, to found a utopian society, called Pantisocracy
