Gigix: My singing teacher is a tenor who sings a lot of Italian opera, so I think I could take a stab at an Italian folk song (an apt phrase perhaps for what I might do to the language of Dante!) The Italian songs mentioned above don't sound supernatural, but keeping your dead lover's head in a flower pot is weird enough for me. Any recommendations for recordings?

"The irruption of the supranatural into natural life" certainly fits a lot of ballads, but would also exclude a great many traditional songs that most people would class as ballads. It would certainly exclude many of the Child Ballads. My own hallmarks for a ballad are that it should tell a story, and have a crisis which is frequently, though not necessarily, resolved fatally.

I would really like to find a tune for Lenore, although I expect any available tunes are of the concert or art song variety, rather than folk. Perhaps I could find a traditional tune to fit the words to.

Edmund