BALLAD 



.357 



BALLARAT 



ington monument at Methuen, Mass. A 

 notable bronze figure of the Father of His 

 Country surmounts a great block of Carrara 

 marble, at the base of which are four seated 

 figures representing Oppression, Revolution, 

 Victory and Cincinnatus. Above these are 

 busts of four important generals who fought 

 with Washington. Ball's figures were always 

 notable in conception and dignified in treat- 

 ment. 



BALLAD, 6ai' ad, a story poem which is 

 written not in the flowing meter and carefully 

 chosen words which distinguish most poetry, 

 but in a crude, almost rough, style and in the 

 simplest and most natural of words. These 

 differences are explained by the manner in 

 which ballads were written, or rather, grew up; 

 for most of the true ballads had no one author. 

 In such a poem, for instance, as Bryant's To a 

 Waterfowl, it is easy to understand how the 

 poet, having seen the solitary bird and been 

 impressed by it, went to his home and wrote 

 down his thoughts and feelings in poetic form. 

 He chose the very best words he could, study- 

 ing long over some of them, and made the 

 lines as musical as a song. But no ballad had 

 such a history. 



When an event occurred, as a great battle, 

 the marriage of a hero, the death of a beautiful 

 girl, the people of some little village would 

 gather to talk of it, and to celebrate or to 

 mourn. Over and over the event would be 

 described, until gradually the more gifted per- 

 sons would make a sort of song of the tale, one 

 person contributing a line, perhaps, and then 

 another. Thus grew up the earliest ballads, 

 t!y in the language of the people. There 

 was no printing in these early ballad days, but 

 parents handed down the verses to their chil- 

 dren from generation to generation. Occa- 

 sionally stanzas would be dropped or others 

 added, and once in a while a man of unusual 

 poetic ability would work over the ballad and 

 make it more perf' 



So there grew up among every European 

 people a ballad literature, each country with 

 few exceptions possessing its own "folk songs/' 

 as they are sometimes called. As learning 

 spread and printed books became common, the 

 literary class often knew nothing whatever of 

 these old verse tales which the people treas- 

 ured in their hearts; but occasionally there 

 arose a man who had an intense interest in old 

 I it miry forms, and who anxiously sought out 

 the ballads, taking them down from the lips of 

 old peasants who could not remember the time 



when they did not know them. In England 

 and Scotland in the seventeenth and early 

 eighteenth centuries these were often printed 

 on single sheets of paper, "broadsides," as they 

 were called, and sold in the street. 



Finally an Englishman, Percy, began to make 

 a real study of ballad literature, and in 1765 

 published his Reliques of Ancient English 

 Poetry. This served to interest others, and in 

 the continental countries, especially in France 

 and Germany, a similar revival took place. In 

 England, Scott was among those who took up 

 the study, publishing in 1802-1803 his Border 

 Minstrelsy. These old ballads had a real in- 

 fluence on the writing of other forms of poetry, 

 which had shown a tendency to become stilted 

 and artificial but now took on a greater free- 

 dom. 



Among the most famous of the old English 

 and Scottish ballads are the series known as 

 the Geste (or Deeds) of Robin Hood, Sir Pat- 

 rick Spens, The Two Corbies, Fair Helen of 

 Kirkconnel Lea and The Ballad of Chevy 

 Chase. Many of the best-known English poems 

 show the influence of the ballad, being imita- 

 tions in form or in subject, as witness the fol- 

 lowing: Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient 

 Mariner, Tennyson's Revenge, Rossetti's Sister 

 Helen, Macaiilay's Horatius at the Bridge, 

 Campbell's Lord Ullin's Daughter, Cowper's 

 John Gilpin's Ride and Longfellow's Wreck of 

 the Hesperus. An idea of the form and man- 

 ner of the old ballad, with all its cnideness, 

 may be seen from the following stanzas from 

 Chevy Chase, a ballad of the days of James I: 



At last these two stout earls did meet ; 



Like captains of great might. 

 Like lions wode, they laid on lode, 



And made a cruel fight. 



They fought until they both did sweat, 

 With swords of tempered steel, 



Until the blood, like drops of rain. 

 They trickling down did feel. 



A.MOO, 



BALLARAT, balarat' , an important city in 

 Victoria, Australia, the center of one of the 

 richest gold-yielding districts in the world. In 

 1851 it was the scene of a most remarkable 

 "gold rush," during which the largest nuggets 

 ever unearthed were found, one specimen being 

 sold for $52,500. The gold mining brought 

 other industries to the town and now it has 

 large iron foundries, flour mills and distilleries. 

 It is divided into two distinct municipalities, 

 Ballarat East and Ballarat West. It is seventy- 

 four miles northwest of Melbourne, with which 

 it is connected by railroad. It also has railway 



