Stephen Fry - The Ode Less Travelled - Unlocking The Poet Within

How could we not want to know more? Did she really suck them out? Was Danny Wise asleep ? Was Annabelle a witch? How did it all turn out? Did he get his revenge? Is the teller of the tale poor Danny himself? Sadly, I have no idea because the rest of it hasn’t come to me yet.

While the second and fourth lines should rhyme, the first and third do not need to, it is up to the balladeer to choose, abab or abcb : nor is any regularity or consistency in your rhyme-scheme required throughout, as this popular old ballad demonstrates:In Scarlet Town, where I was born,There was a fair maid dwellin’ Made every lad cry wellaway,And her name was Barbara Allen .All in the merry month of May ,When green buds they were swellin’ ,Young Jemmy Grove on his deathbed lay ,For love of Barbara Allen .

A quatrain is by no means compulsory, a six-line stanza is commonly found, rhyming xbxbxb , as in Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ and Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol .The Walrus and the CarpenterWere walking close at hand :They wept like anything to seeSuch quantities of sand :‘If this were only cleared away,’They said, ‘it would be grand .’And all men kill the thing they love,By all let this be heard ,Some do it with a bitter look,Some with a flattering word ,The coward does it with a kiss,The brave man with a sword !

Although more ‘literary’ examples may favour a regular accentual- syllabic measure, ballads are perfect examples of accentual verse: it doesn’t matter how many syllables there are, it is the beats that matter. Here is Marriot Edgar’s ‘Albert and the Lion’, which was written as a comic monologue to be recited to a background piano that plunks down its chords on the beats of each four-or three-stress line. Part of the pleasure of this style of ballad is the mad scudding rush of un accented syllables, the pausing, the accelerations and decelerations: when Stanley Holloway performed this piece, the audience started to laugh simply at his timing of the rhythm. I have marked with underlines the syllables that might receive a little extra push if required: it is usually up to the performer. Recite it as you read.There’s a famous seaside place called Blackpool,That’s notedfor fresh-air and fun,And Mrand MrsRams bottom Wentthere with young Albert, their son.A grandlittle ladwas their AlbertAll dressedin his best; quite a swell’E’d a stickwith an ’orse’s ’ead ’andleThe finest that Woolworths could sell.

Or there’s Wallace Casalingua’s ‘The Day My Trousers Fell’, which has even more syllables to contend with:Now I trustthat your earsyou’ll be lending,To this taleof our decadent times;There’s a be ginning, a middle and an endingAnd for the mostpart there’s rhythms and versesand

rhymes.My name, you must know, is John Weston,Though to my friendsI’m Jackie or Jack;I’ve a placeon the outskirts of Preston,The tiniest scrapof a garden with a shedand a hammock

round’t back.I was giving the fishgirl her payment,The codwere ninety a pound–When, with a snapand a rustle of raimentMy trousers, they droppedto the ground. Con-ster-nation.

Border ballads, like ‘Barbara Allen’ and those of Walter Scott, became a popular genre in their own right, often like broadsheet ballads expressing political grievances, spreading news and celebrating the exploits of highwaymen and other popular rebels, rogues and heroes: subgenres like the murder ballad still exist, 6often told from the murderer’s point of view, full of grim detail and a sardonic acknowledgement of the inevitability of tragedy.Frankie and Johnny were lovers,O Lordy, how they could love;They swore to be true to each other,Just as true as the stars above. He was her man but he done her wrong .

Robert Service, the English-born Canadian poet, wrote very popular rough’n’tough ballads mostly set around the Klondike Gold Rush; you will really enjoy reading this out, don’t be afraid (if alone) to try a North American accent–and it should be fast :A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and glare,There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.There was none could place the stranger’s face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

To observe the regularity of the caesuras in this ballad would be like complimenting an eagle on its intellectual grasp of the principles of aerodynamics, but I am sure you can see that ‘Dangerous Dan McGrew’ could as easily be laid out with line breaks after ‘up’ and ‘box’ in the first two lines, ‘drink’ in the last and as the commas indicate elsewhere, to give it a standard four-three structure. We remember this layout from our examination of Kipling’s ballad in fourteeners, ‘Tommy’. A. E. Housman’s ‘The Colour of his Hair’, 7a bitter tirade against the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, is also cast in fourteeners. I can’t resist quoting it in full.Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?And what has he been after, that they groan and shake their fists?And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?Oh they’re taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.’Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his;In the good old time ’twas hanging for the colour that it is;Though hanging isn’t bad enough and flaying would be fairFor the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.Oh a deal of pains he’s taken and a pretty price he’s paidTo hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade;But they’ve pulled the beggar’s hat off for the world to see and stare,And they’re taking him to justice for the colour of his hair.Now ’tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet,And the quarry-gang on portland in the cold and in the heat,And between his spells of labour in the time he has to spareHe can curse the god that made him for the colour of his hair.

There is also a strong tradition of rural ballad, one of the best-known examples being the strangely macabre ‘John Barleycorn’:There were three men come out of the WestTheir fortunes for to try,And these three men made a solemn vow:John Barleycorn should die!They plowed, they sowed, they harrowed him in,Threw clods upon his head,And these three men made a solemn vow:John Barleycorn was dead!They let him lie for a very long time’Til the rain from Heaven did fall,Then Little Sir John sprung up his head,And so amazed them all.