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Ballads Quotes

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Ballads Quotes

“Scotland's contribution to American balladry is a subject which was either glossed over or neglected entirely by Cecil Sharp, the English folklorist and ballad collector, when he came over to the United States in search of traditional song poetry. Over here we are indebted to Sharp and to Miss Maud Karpeles for exploring the back country and helping us find what we had. Their visits were fruitful and their English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians is an exemplary work. But it is regrettable that a Scottish folklorist, familiar and in tune with Lowland traditions, was not close at hand to make a few claims of his own. Somebody needed to suggest that Scotland had as good a claim to half the British ballads Sharp collected in Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina as England has. Somebody might have suggested that English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians is a misleading title - that British Folk Songs would have been more accurate. For, after all, the most authoritative editor in the business, Francis J. Child, had clearly recognised two national traditions in his monumental English and Scottish Popular Ballads, which is the keystone work on which all subsequent studies have been based.”

VirginiaTennesseeNorth CarolinaBalladsSouthern Appalachian PoetryAmerican BalladsCecil SharpLowland ScotlandSouthern Appalachians
Book:Saltire Review 20, Spring 1960
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“I loved these songs and could still hear them in my head long after and into the next day. They weren't protest songs, though, they were rebel ballads... even in a simple, melodic wooing ballad there'd be rebellion waiting around the corner. You couldn't escape it. There were songs like that in my repertoire, too, where something lovely was suddenly upturned, but in stead of rebellion showing up it would be death itself, the Grim Reaper. Rebellion spoke to me louder. The rebel was alive and well, romantic and honorable. The Grim Reaper wasn't like that.”

DeathMusicRebelBallads
Book:Chronicles, Volume One
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“It's the ballads I like best, and I'm not talking about the clichéd ones where a diva hits her highest note or a rock band tones it down a couple of notches for the ladies. I mean a true ballad. Dictionary definition: a song that tells a story in short stanzas and simple words, with repetition, refrain, etc. My definition: the punk rocker or the country crooner telling the story of his life in three minutes, reminding us of the numerous ways to screw up.”

Ballads
Book:Ballads of Suburbia
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“Both were ballads about a woman "marked by the moon." In them, the Song Mage praised his muse, describing her midnight hair, her rosebud mouth, her rocky spine. They were odes to her unparalleled beauty. "He's a little obsessed," said Emeline when she finished singing. "Even her teeth enchant him." She browsed through the next ballad---also about his moon-marked woman. "And she must have had some pretty sexy ankles, because there's an entire verse devoted to them in the next song...." The corner of Hawthorne's mouth turned up. "Maybe ankles were his weakness." Emeline glanced up at the boy cooking her dinner. He was like the forest, she thought. Quiet and steadfast in the way he held himself, with secrets hidden beneath. What's your weakness? she wondered.”

BalladsFeminine AllureSongs Of Love
Book:Edgewood
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“Some of these tales were about the ‘land beneath the waves’. This Irish fable tells of an enchanted world, under the water, and mortals may visit there at dusk, between the rising and the setting of the moon, when the water is still, and reflects like a mirror. They used to call it the ‘gates of glass’.”

BalladsArlene Stafford WilsonLanark CountyDrummond TownshipFerguson FallsIrish LegendsIrish PioneersIrish StoriesJimmy PhelanJimmy Whelan
Book:Lanark County Calling: All Roads Lead Home
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“... torches on either side of it illuminated carvings that were equally intricate and far more inviting. Evangeline saw symbols from countless Northern tales and ballads: star-shaped keys and broken books, knights in armour, a crowned wolf's head, winged horses, bits of castles, arrows and foxes, and twining vines of harlequin lilies.”

TalesStephanie GarberEvangeline FoxEvangelineBalladsOnce Upon A Broken HeartWolf HallArch
Book:Once Upon a Broken Heart
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“Folk-tales and ballads conceive of Elfland with a different notion of time to our own. Its people mirror the activities of our world as if to mock or distort them, and to our eyes seem immortal. They affect our world, bringing benefit or harm, but these results are not consonant with our rules, and may resemble the arbitrary operation of luck or chance. Although men may interact with these folk, they can neither understand nor trust them. The Border Ballads in general are ready to accommodate similtaneously a theology of expiation, reward and punishment, and an Elfland which has no moral imperatives, and interpenetrates our own in unpredictable ways, even inserting off-spring among us by means of the changeling.”

BalladsFolktalesChangelingElflandBorder Ballads
Book:The Great Shadow House: Essays on the Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction
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“I compelled myself all through to write an exercise in verse, in a different form, every day of the year. I turned out my page every day, of some sort - I mean I didn't give a damn about the meaning, I just wanted to master the form - all the way from free verse, Walt Whitman, to the most elaborate of villanelles and ballad forms. Very good training. I've always told everybody who has ever come to me that I thought that was the first thing to do.”

WayGivingWritingYearsFirstsMeanDifferentWantedFormMastersExercisePagesTrainingVery GoodDamnThings To DoVersesCompelledWaltBalladsDays Of The YearFree Verse
Author:Conrad Aiken
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“In the United States, many people said you can't have folk music in the United States because you don't have any peasant class. But the funny thing was, there were literally thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who loved old time fiddling, ballads, banjo tunes, blues played on the guitar, spirituals and gospel hymns. These songs and music didn't fit into any neat category of art music nor popular music nor jazz. So gradually they said well let's call it folk music.”

PeopleWellsArtSaidStatesSongUnitedClassUnited StatesFitJazzGuitarFolksTunesCategoriesThey SaidFunny ThingsPeasantsNeatHymnsFolk MusicBalladsOld TimePopular MusicArt MusicBanjos
Author:Pete Seeger
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“The summer lasted a long long time, like verse after verse of a ballad, but when it ended, it ended like a man falling dead in the street of heart trouble. One night, all in one night, severe winter came, a white horse of snow rolling over Bountiful, snorting and rolling in its meadows, its fields.”

MenHeartLongNightFallWhiteTroubleStreetsFieldsSummerLong TimeHorseWinterSnowVersesRollingSevereOne NightMeadowsBalladsWhite HorseRolling Over
Book:The Peaceable Kingdom
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“I'm interested in feedback and learning what people want. It's a tricky thing for me when I do a set list. You get bored doing the same songs. Let's say we do one ballad in two hours, and it's "Wild Horses." If you say, I'm tired of that, let's try something less well known, and then you're out there stumbling through this song you just relearned at sound check, and you realize people probably want "Wild Horses" instead of this. You do need to do some songs that aren't so well known. The question is how many? I'm open to people posting their requests.”

PeopleIfsWantNeedsTryingWellsTwoSongSoundRealizingHoursKnownLaughingHorseTiredListsChecksBoredWell KnownFeedbackRequestTrickyI'm TiredStumblingBalladsWild Horses
Author:Mick Jagger
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“After tea, we discussed a variety of topics before the fire; and Mrs. Micawber was good enough to sing us (in a small, thin, flat voice, which I remembered to have considered, when I first knew her, the very table-beer of acoustics) the favourite ballads of "The Dashing White Sergeant", and "Little Tafflin".”

FirstsLittlesEnoughCharacterVoiceWhiteInterestingFireTablesVarietyTeaBeerRememberedFlatsGood EnoughFavouriteTopicsAcousticsBalladsInteresting CharactersSergeantsDashingMicawber
Book:David Copperfield (World Classics, Unabridged)
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“The reason I've gotten into script-writing, which was accidental to begin with, was that I found it was a far more effective medium for violence. Which is something that I'd always written in songs, but the violence always sat strangely within a song. And I was always interested in the way in which you listen to murder ballads and things like that - these weird lines would kind of come out, like, I drug her by the hair or something - that sat weirdly in the song. Film seems to be a medium designed for betrayal and violence.”

WayWritingKindReasonSeemsFilmSongFoundLinesViolenceWrittenHairDrugMurderScriptsBetrayalMediumsSatBallads
Author:Nick Cave
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