Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
ballad, ballade (nn.)
The word ballad means either “a popular short stanzaic verse narrative” or “a sentimental song, usually about love.” Many are anonymous, set to music, and essentially of the people, rather than of the court or upper classes. There are also what might be called literary ballads—deliberate imitations of the ballad form and content.
A ballade is a sophisticated verse type of Old French and Provençal origin: usually three stanzas of eight to ten lines each, often with an interlocking rhyme scheme, with the final line in each stanza a refrain, and frequently ending with a summarizing or dedicatory stanza (called an envoy) four or five lines long, also with a final refrain. Many were written in Middle English and Middle Scots, but the form is considered harder to work with in today’s English, thanks in part to changes in the stress patterns of the many Modern English words borrowed from French during the Middle English period.
