Download Free Popular British Ballads Ancient And Modern Classic Reprint Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Popular British Ballads Ancient And Modern Classic Reprint and write the review.

The word "ballad" is admittedly of very wide significance. Meaning originally "a song intended as the accompaniment to a dance," it was afterwards applied to "a light simple song of any kind" with a leaning towards the sentimental or romantic; and, in its present use, is defined by Dr Murray as "a simple spirited poem in short stanzas, in which some popular story is graphically told." Passing over the obsolete sense of "a popular song specially celebrating or scurrilously attacking some person or institution," we may note that Dr Johnson calls a ballad "a song," and quotes a statement from Watts that it once "signified a solemn and sacred song as well as a trivial, when Solomon's Song was called the 'The Ballad of Ballads,' but now it is applied to nothing but trifling verse." Ballad-collectors, however, have never strictly regarded any one of these definitions, and to me their catholicity seems worthy of imitation. I have demanded no more of a ballad than that it should be a simple spirited narrative; and, though excluding the pure lyrics and metrical romances found in Percy's Reliques or elsewhere, I have been guided in doubtful cases rather by intuition than by rule. I have included poems written in every variety of metre except blank verse, and even the latter may seem to be represented by Blake's Fair Elinor. Moreover, this is a collection of poems, not of archaeological specimens or verses on great historic events; and the ballads have been chosen according to my judgment of their artistic merits.
Excerpt from Popular British Ballads, Ancient and Modern For forty days and forty nights He wade thro' red blue to the knee, And he saw neither sun nor moon, But heard the roaring of the sea. Thomas the Rhymer. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
One of the Spectator's Books of the Year 2012 'Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain For we've received orders for to sail for old England But we hope in a short while to see you again' One of the great English popular art forms, the folk song can be painful, satirical, erotic, dramatic, rueful or funny. They have thrived when sung on a whim to a handful of friends in a pub; they have bewitched generations of English composers who have set them for everything from solo violin to full orchestra; they are sung in concerts, festivals, weddings, funerals and with nobody to hear but the singer. This magical new collection brings together all the classic folk songs as well as many lesser-known discoveries, complete with music and annotations on their original sources and meaning. Published in cooperation with the English Folk Dance and Song Society, it is a worthy successor to Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L.Lloyd's original Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. 'Her keen eye did glitter like the bright stars by night The robe she was wearing was costly and white Her bare neck was shaded with her long raven hair And they called her pretty Susan, the pride of Kildare' In association with EFDSS, the English Folk Dance and Song Society
In The Late Victorian Folksong Revival: The Persistence of English Melody, 1878-1903, E. David Gregory provides a reliable and comprehensive history of the birth and early development of the first English folksong revival. Continuing where Victorian Songhunters, his first book, left off, Gregory systematically explores what the Late Victorian folksong collectors discovered in the field and what they published for posterity, identifying differences between the songs noted from oral tradition and those published in print. In doing so, he determines the extent to which the collectors distorted what they found when publishing the results of their research in an era when some folksong texts were deemed unsuitable for "polite ears." The book provides a reliable overall survey of the birth of a movement, tracing the genesis and development of the first English folksong revival. It discusses the work of more than a dozen song-collectors, focusing in particular on three key figures: the pioneer folklorist in the English west country, Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould; Frank Kidson, who greatly increased the known corpus of Yorkshire song; and Lucy Broadwood, who collected mainly in the counties of Sussex and Surrey, and with Kidson and others, was instrumental in founding the Folk Song Society in the late 1890s. The book includes copious examples of the song tunes and texts collected, including transcriptions of nearly 300 traditional ballads, broadside ballads, folk lyrics, occupational songs, carols, shanties, and "national songs," demonstrating the abundance and high quality of the songs recovered by these early collectors.