Dick,
Quite!

Jim,
You misread me. I didn't say that all items on broadsides were ballads, only the broadside ballads, i.e., the ones that are narrative.

Whilst all this discussion has been going on I realised that though I'm pretty happy with the 'essence' of our sort of ballad, I wasn't really all that clear with the meaning of the commercial world's ballad. Would this be a love song? Are there any other qualifiers?