Ballads

Like chapbooks, ballads were also sold door to door by peddlers. Ballads, 'to dance', were most commonly the printed form of folk music that had been orally passed down for generations. These printed forms came to be known as Broadside Ballads (the term broadside was considered to mean subject material printed only on one side of the page- could also be advertisements, etc.)

Originally, broadsides did not include music, but rather a note that the words were sung to a well-known tune. Like the chapbooks, these ballads were often accompanied by crude woodcuts

The style of the traditional ballad is commonly metrically simple and sometimes unrhymed. Two classical ballad writers included William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 3

Strait to some market place or alley,
And sitting down judiciously
Begin to sing. The people soon
Gather about, to hear the tune --
One stretches out his hand, and cries
Come, let me have it, what's the price?
But one poor halfpenny, says I,
And sure you cannot that deny.
Here, take it, then says he, and throws
The money. Then away he goes,
Humming it as he walks along,
Endeavouring to learn the song. 4