Ballad is a folk
song or orally transmitted poem telling in a direct and dramatic manner
some popular story usually derived from a tragic incident in local history or
legend. The story is told simply, impersonally, and often with vivid dialogue.
Ballads are normally composed in quatrains with alternating four-stress and
three-stress lines, the second and fourth lines rhyming (see ballad metre); but
some ballads are in couplet form, and some others have six-line stanzas.
Appearing in many parts of Europe in the late Middle Ages, ballads nourished
particularly strongly in Scotland from the 15th century onward. Since the 18th
century, educated poets outside the folk-song tradition— notably Coleridge and
Goethe—have written imitations of the popular ballad's form and style:
Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' (1798) is a celebrated example.