When he was lecturing in English at Melbourne Uni Ian Maxwell spoke often about ballads. The Public Lecture Theatre could seat 850 and was used for his First Year lectures; the venue would usually be full, with people from other parts of the uni coming to hear him. His powers of recitation brought many to tears. He also ran the studies in Old Icelandic (required for Honours students at the time) and some of the Old Icelandic ballads were not just sung, they were danced; the longer ones went for three days!

Perhaps at the other end of the spectrum of ballads from Plaisir D'Amour but. like all good discussions, it's helpful (required in scholarly ones) to start with a definition of terms and then use the discussion to explore if, why and how the definitions need to be modified for the purposes at hand. Robbie put it well, but it could be shortened to "context flavours the content"; another relevant cliche is "form follows function".

But I'm sure most of you already knew that. As an aside, I first noticed this thread when it had only two posts and. although I felt I could adequately explain my understanding of the term (as could the Cap'n, incidentally), I decided to look up "ballad" on Wikipedia. Sure enough, the definition there was roughly equivalent to what I understood (it even defined "Ballade" as a separate form not to be confused with "ballad") so I thought the Cap'n might just be poking the ant's nest. Perhaps I was mistaken. The examples that have been presented are interesting to contemplate.

Cheers, Rowan