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.
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
3.
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
4.
John Keats
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John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He had a significant influence on a range of poets. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keatss work was the most significant literary experience of his life, the poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through the emphasis of natural imagery. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular, John Keats was born in Moorgate, London, on 31 October 1795 to Thomas Keats and his wife, born Frances Jennings. There is no evidence of his exact birthplace. Although Keats and his family seem to have marked his birthday on 29 October and he was the eldest of four surviving children, his younger siblings were George, Thomas, and Frances Mary Fanny who eventually married Spanish author Valentín Llanos Gutiérrez. Another son was lost in infancy and his father first worked as a hostler at the stables attached to the Swan and Hoop Inn, an establishment he later managed, and where the growing family lived for some years. Keats believed that he was born at the inn, a birthplace of humble origins, the Globe pub now occupies the site, a few yards from the modern-day Moorgate station. He was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, and sent to a dame school as a child. His parents were unable to afford Eton or Harrow, so in the summer of 1803, he was sent to board at John Clarkes school in Enfield, the small school had a liberal outlook and a progressive curriculum more modern than the larger, more prestigious schools. In the family atmosphere at Clarkes, Keats developed an interest in classics and history, the headmasters son, Charles Cowden Clarke, also became an important mentor and friend, introducing Keats to Renaissance literature, including Tasso, Spenser, and Chapmans translations. The young Keats was described by his friend Edward Holmes as a character, always in extremes, given to indolence. However, at 13 he began focusing his energy on reading and study, in April 1804, when Keats was eight, his father died. The cause of death was a fracture, suffered when he fell from his horse while returning from a visit to Keats. Frances remarried two months later, but left her new husband soon afterwards, and the four went to live with their grandmother, Alice Jennings. In March 1810 when Keats was 14, his mother died of tuberculosis and she appointed two guardians, Richard Abbey and John Sandell, to take care of them. That autumn, Keats left Clarkes school to apprentice with Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary who was a neighbour, Keats lodged in the attic above the surgery at 7 Church Street until 1813
5.
Robin Hood
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Robin Hood is a heroic outlaw in English folklore who, according to legend, was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. Traditionally depicted as being dressed in Lincoln green, he is portrayed as robbing from the rich. Robin Hood became a folk figure in the late-medieval period. Little John, Much the Millers Son and Will Scarlet all appear and this view first gained currency in the 16th century. It is not supported by the earliest ballads, the early compilation, A Gest of Robyn Hode, names the king as Edward, and while it does show Robin Hood accepting the Kings pardon, he later repudiates it and returns to the greenwood. The oldest surviving ballad, Robin Hood and the Monk, gives even less support to the picture of Robin Hood as a partisan of the true king. The setting of the early ballads is usually attributed by scholars to either the 13th century or the 14th, the early ballads are also quite clear on Robin Hoods social status, he is a yeoman. While the precise meaning of this changed over time, including free retainers of an aristocrat and small landholders. The essence of it in the present context was neither a knight nor a peasant or husbonde, artisans were among those regarded as yeomen in the 14th century. As well as ballads, the legend was also transmitted by Robin Hood games or plays that were an important part of the late medieval and early modern May Day festivities. The first record of a Robin Hood game was in 1426 in Exeter, the Robin Hood games are known to have flourished in the later 15th and 16th centuries. It is commonly stated as fact that Maid Marian and a jolly friar entered the legend through the May Games, the earliest surviving text of a Robin Hood ballad is the 15th century Robin Hood and the Monk. This is preserved in Cambridge University manuscript Ff.5.48, written after 1450, it contains many of the elements still associated with the legend, from the Nottingham setting to the bitter enmity between Robin and the local sheriff. The first printed version is A Gest of Robyn Hode, a collection of stories that attempts to unite the episodes into a single continuous narrative. After this comes Robin Hood and the Potter, contained in a manuscript of c, the Potter is markedly different in tone from The Monk, whereas the earlier tale is a thriller the latter is more comic, its plot involving trickery and cunning rather than straightforward force. Other early texts are dramatic pieces, the earliest being the fragmentary Robyn Hod, each of these three ballads survived in a single copy, so it is unclear how much of the medieval legend has survived, and what has survived may not be typical of the medieval legend. The story of Robins aid to the knight that takes up much of the Gest may be an example. The character of Robin in these first texts is rougher edged than in his later incarnations, of my good he shall haue some, Yf he be a por man
6.
Romance (love)
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Romance is the expressive and pleasurable feeling from an emotional attraction towards another person often associated with sexual attraction. It is eros rather than agape, philia, or storge, historically, the term romance originates with the medieval ideal of chivalry as set out in its chivalric romance literature. Humans have an inclination to form bonds with one another through social interactions. The debate over an exact definition of love may be found in literature as well as in the works of psychologists, philosophers, biochemists and other professionals. The addition of drama to relationships of close, deep and strong love, psychologist Charles Lindholm defined love to be. an intense attraction that involves the idealization of the other, within an erotic context, with expectation of enduring sometime into the future. The word was originally an adverb of the Latin origin Romanicus, the connecting notion is that European medieval vernacular tales were usually about chivalric adventure, not combining the idea of love until late into the seventeenth century. In primitive societies, tension existed between marriage and the erotic, but this was expressed in taboo regarding the menstrual cycle. Anthropologists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss show that there were forms of courtship in ancient as well as contemporary primitive societies. There may not be evidence, however, that members of such societies formed loving relationships distinct from their established customs in a way that would parallel modern romance, before the 18th century, many marriages were not arranged, but rather developed out of more or less spontaneous relationships. After the 18th century, illicit relationships took on an independent role. In bourgeois marriage, illicitness may have become more formidable and likely to cause tension, in Ladies of the Leisure Class, Rutgers University professor Bonnie G. Smith depicts courtship and marriage rituals that may be viewed as oppressive to modern people. She writes When the young women of the Nord married, they did so without illusions of love and they acted within a framework of concern for the reproduction of bloodlines according to financial, professional, and sometimes political interests. Subsequent sexual revolution has lessened the conflicts arising out of liberalism, anthony Giddens, in his book The Transformation of Intimacy, Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Society, states that romantic love introduced the idea of a narrative into an individuals life. He adds that telling a story was one of the meanings of romance, according to Giddens, the rise of romantic love more or less coincided with the emergence of the novel. It was then that romantic love, associated with freedom and therefore the ideals of romantic love, for the discourse of intimacy emotional closeness was much more important than passion. This does not mean by any means that intimacy is to replace romance, on the contrary, intimacy and romance coexist. The 21st century has seen the growth of globalization and people now live in a world of transformations that affect almost every aspect of our lives, one example of the changes experienced in relationships was explored by Giddens regarding homosexual relationships. According to Giddens since homosexuals were not able to marry they were forced to more open
7.
Knight
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A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a monarch or other political leader for service to the monarch or country, especially in a military capacity. Historically, in Europe, knighthood was conferred upon mounted warriors, during the High Middle Ages, knighthood was considered a class of lower nobility. By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, often, a knight was a vassal who served as a fighter for a lord, with payment in the form of land holdings. The lords trusted the knights, who were skilled in battle on horseback, since the early modern period, the title of knight is purely honorific, usually bestowed by a monarch, as in the British honours system, often for non-military service to the country. The modern female equivalent in the United Kingdom is Dame, furthermore, Geoffroi de Charnys Book of Chivalry expounded upon the importance of Christian faith in every area of a knights life. This novel explored the ideals of knighthood and their incongruity with the reality of Cervantes world, in the late medieval period, new methods of warfare began to render classical knights in armour obsolete, but the titles remained in many nations. Some orders of knighthood, such as the Knights Templar, have become the subject of legend, each of these orders has its own criteria for eligibility, but knighthood is generally granted by a head of state or monarch to selected persons to recognise some meritorious achievement. This linkage is reflected in the etymology of chivalry, cavalier, the special prestige accorded to mounted warriors finds a parallel in the furusiyya in the Muslim world, and the Greek hippeus and Roman eques of classical antiquity. The word knight, from Old English cniht, is a cognate of the German word Knecht and this meaning, of unknown origin, is common among West Germanic languages. Middle High German had the phrase guoter kneht, which also meant knight, the Anglo-Saxon cniht had no connection to horsemanship, the word referred to any servant. A rādcniht, riding-servant, was a servant delivering messages or patrolling coastlines on horseback, a narrowing of the generic meaning servant to military follower of a king or other superior is visible by 1100. The specific military sense of a knight as a warrior in the heavy cavalry emerges only in the Hundred Years War. The verb to knight appears around 1300, and, from the same time, an Equestrian was a member of the second highest social class in the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. This class is often translated as knight, the medieval knight, both Greek ἳππος and Latin equus are derived from the Proto-Indo-European word root ekwo-, horse. In the later Roman Empire, the classical Latin word for horse, equus, was replaced in common parlance by the vulgar Latin caballus, sometimes thought to derive from Gaulish caballos. From caballus arose terms in the various Romance languages cognate with the English cavalier, Italian cavaliere, Spanish caballero, French chevalier, Portuguese cavaleiro, the Germanic languages have terms cognate with the English rider, German Ritter, and Dutch and Scandinavian ridder. These words are derived from Germanic rīdan, to ride, in turn derived from the Proto-Indo-European root reidh-, in ancient Rome there was a knightly class Ordo Equestris from which European knighthood may have been derived. Some portions of the armies of Germanic peoples who occupied Europe from the 3rd century AD onward had been mounted, in the Early Medieval period any well-equipped horseman could be described as a knight, or miles in Latin
8.
Harp
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The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard, which are plucked with the fingers. Harps have been known since antiquity in Asia, Africa and Europe, Harps vary globally in many ways. In terms of size, many smaller harps can be played on the lap, whereas larger harps are quite heavy, different harps may use strings of catgut or nylon, or of metal, or some combination. While all harps have a neck, resonator, and strings, frame harps have a pillar at their end to support the strings, while open harps, such as arch or bow harps. Modern harps also vary in techniques used to extend the range and chromaticity of the strings, the earliest harps and lyres were found in Sumer,3500 BC, and several harps were found in burial pits and royal tombs in Ur. The oldest depictions of harps without a forepillar can be adjacent to the Near East, in the wall paintings of ancient Egyptian tombs in the Nile Valley. These murals show an instrument that resembles the hunters bow. The chang flourished in Persia in many forms from its introduction, about 3000 BC, around 1900 BC arched harps in the Iraq–Iran region were replaced by angular harps with vertical or horizontal sound boxes. By the start of the Common Era, robust, vertical, angular harps, in the last century of the Sasanian period, angular harps were redesigned to make them as light as possible, while they became more elegant, they lost their structural rigidity. At the height of the Persian tradition of illustrated book production, such light harps were still frequently depicted, the works of the Tamil Sangam literature describe the harp and its variants, as early as 200 BC. Variants were described ranging from 14 to 17 strings, and the instrument used by wandering minstrels for accompaniment, another early South Asian harp was the ancient veena, unlike the modern instrument of the same name, the ancient veena was a harp vice the modern lute-type instrument. Some Samudragupta gold coins show of the mid-4th century AD show the king Samudragupta himself playing the instrument, the ancient veena survives today in Burma, in the form of the saung harp still played there. The harp was popular in ancient China and neighboring regions, though harps are largely extinct in East Asia in the modern day, the Chinese konghou harp is documented as early as the Spring and Autumn period, and became extinct during the Ming Dynasty. A similar harp, the gonghu was played in ancient Korea, Harps are essentially triangular in shape, and are made primarily of wood. Harp strings are made of gut or metal, the top end of each string is secured on the crossbar or neck of the instrument, where each will have a tuning peg or similar device to adjust the pitch of that string. It is the distance between the tuning peg and the soundboard, as well as the tension and weight of the string, the body is hollow and when a taut string is plucked, the body resonates, projecting sound. The longest side of the harp is called the column or pillar, though some earlier harps, such as a bow harp, on most harps, the sole purpose of the pillar is to hold up the neck against the great strain of the strings. On harps which have pedals, the pillar is a column and encloses the rods which adjust the pitch of strings
9.
Bishop
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A bishop is an ordained, consecrated, or appointed member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within these churches, bishops are seen as those who possess the full priesthood, Some Protestant churches including the Lutheran and Methodist churches have bishops serving similar functions as well, though not always understood to be within apostolic succession in the same way. Priests, deacons and lay ministers cooperate and assist their bishop in shepherding a flock, the earliest organization of the Church in Jerusalem was, according to most scholars, similar to that of Jewish synagogues, but it had a council or college of ordained presbyters. In, we see a system of government in Jerusalem chaired by James the Just. In, the Apostle Paul ordains presbyters in churches in Anatolia, in Timothy and Titus in the New Testament a more clearly defined episcopate can be seen. We are told that Paul had left Timothy in Ephesus and Titus in Crete to oversee the local church, Paul commands Titus to ordain presbyters/bishops and to exercise general oversight, telling him to rebuke with all authority. Early sources are unclear but various groups of Christian communities may have had the bishop surrounded by a group or college functioning as leaders of the local churches, eventually, as Christendom grew, bishops no longer directly served individual congregations. Instead, the Metropolitan bishop appointed priests to each congregation. Around the end of the 1st century, the organization became clearer in historical documents. While Ignatius of Antioch offers the earliest clear description of monarchial bishops he is an advocate of monepiscopal structure rather than describing an accepted reality. To the bishops and house churches to which he writes, he offers strategies on how to pressure house churches who dont recognize the bishop into compliance. Other contemporary Christian writers do not describe monarchial bishops, either continuing to equate them with the presbyters or speaking of episkopoi in a city, plainly therefore we ought to regard the bishop as the Lord Himself — Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians 6,1. Your godly bishop — Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians 2,1, therefore as the Lord did nothing without the Father, either by Himself or by the Apostles, so neither do ye anything without the bishop and the presbyters. — Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians 7,1. Be obedient to the bishop and to one another, as Jesus Christ was to the Father, and as the Apostles were to Christ and to the Father, — Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians 13,2. Apart from these there is not even the name of a church, — Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallesians 3,1. Follow your bishop, as Jesus Christ followed the Father, and the presbytery as the Apostles, and to the deacons pay respect, as to Gods commandment — Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnans 8,1. He that honoureth the bishop is honoured of God, he that doeth aught without the knowledge of the bishop rendereth service to the devil — Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnans 9,1
10.
The Ballad of Chevy Chase
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There are two extant English ballads known as The Ballad of Chevy Chase, both of which narrate the same story. As ballads existed within oral tradition before being written down, other versions of this popular song also may have existed. Moreover, many continued to use the Chevy Chase tune without necessarily referring to The Ballad of Chevy Chase. The ballads tell the story of a hunting party upon a parcel of hunting land in the Cheviot Hills, hence the term. The hunt is led by Percy, the English Earl of Northumberland, the Scottish Earl of Douglas had forbidden this hunt and interpreted it as an invasion of Scotland. In response he attacked, causing a battle after which only 110 people survived. Both ballads were collected in Thomas Percys Reliques and the first of the ballads in Francis James Childs Child Ballads. Simpson suggests that the music of Chevy Chase was identical to the tune of Flying Flame, the ballads in these collections were printed with variations between 1623 and 1760. Online facsimiles of the ballad are also available for consumption at sites like the English Broadside Ballad Archive. The Complaynt of Scotland was printed in approximately 1540, and in it the ballad is called The Hunting of Cheviot, in the seventeenth century, the tune was licensed in 1624 and again in 1675. Sir Philip Sidney said of this ballad, I never Heard the old song of Percie and Douglas. For my own part, I am so professed an admirer of this antiquated song, apparently Addison was unaware that the ballad he then goes on to analyse in detail, was not the same work praised by Sidney and Jonson. The second of the ballads appears to have written in modernized English shortly after Sidneys comments, perhaps around 1620. In Sir Walter Scotts Rob Roy, the character, Frank, upon seeing the trophies on the walls of Osbaldistone hall. An early and popular painting of 1825–6 by Edwin Landseer was entitled The Hunting of Chevy Chase. ”In Elizabeth Gaskells North and South, on hearing the conversation between Mr. Thornton and her father, Margaret Hale wonders, “How in the world had they got from cog-wheels to Chevy Chase. ”In F. Ansteys Vice Versa, the boys at Dr Grimstones boarding school are required to play a game called chevy, so called from the engagement famed in ballad and history. A tract of land in British America was named Cheivy Chace by 1725, and was developed into the modern affluent areas of Chevy Chase, Maryland. A golf club in the Maryland Chevy Chase inspired the name of Chevy Chase, Lexington, a shopping mall in the Eldon Square Shopping Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne, is named Chevy Chase after the ballad. The childhood nickname and adult stage name of the American comedian, Popular Music of the Olden Time
11.
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
12.
The Bonnie Earl O' Moray
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The Bonnie Earl o Moray is a popular Scottish ballad, which may date from as early as the 17th century. It is catalogued as Child Ballad No.181, versions can be heard on Isla St Clairs album Great Songs and Ballads of Scotland and Irish-American singer Robbie OConnells album Close to the Bone. The ballad touches on a true story stemming from the rivalry of James Stewart, Earl of Moray, and the Earl of Huntly, in the attempt to apprehend Moray, the earls house at Donibristle in Fife was set on fire and the visiting Sheriff of Moray killed. Moray fled the house, but was chased and killed in its grounds, betrayed, it was said and his last words, according to the story related by Walter Scott, deserve special mention. Huntly slashed him across the face with his sword, and as he lay dying Moray said Ye hae spilt a better face than yer ain. Morays mother, Margaret Campbell, had a made of her sons dead body, as evidence of his multiple wounds. Her intention was to show this publicly at the Cross in Edinburgh, the Kings reaction in the ballad is to condemn Huntlys action, Now wae be to thee, Huntly. I bade you bring him wi you, But forbade you him to slay, nevertheless, James did not punish Huntly, prompting rumours of his own complicity in the murder. It is possible that the inclusion of the Kings clear condemnation of the deed was an effort to prevent the ballad from appearing treasonous, however, we can discount the ballads claim that Moray was the Queens lover. The ballad, which praises Moray as a gallant, was most likely composed by one of his supporters. The words Oh he might have been a king, should not be taken to imply that he could have become King. More likely, they conveyed the sense that he possessed the attributes of a king. It is from the first verse of The Bonnie Earl o Moray that the term mondegreen, meaning a misheard lyric, Ye Highlands and ye Lawlands, Oh where have you been. They have slain the Earl o Moray And layd him on the green, when the ballad is sung in Scots, the form is different from the more anglicised version in the Child catalogue. For example, the verses given above are sung with words, Ye Hielands an ye Lowlands O. Now wae betide thee, Huntly And whaurfor did ye sae, I hae bade ye bring him wi ye But forbade ye him tae slay. A German translation by Johann Gottfried Herder, Murrays Ermordung, published 1778–79, was set to music by Johannes Brahms in 1858, the ballad was also set to music by Benjamin Britten. The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term mondegreen in an essay The Death of Lady Mondegreen, which was published in Harpers Magazine in November 1954
