"I've never thought of a ballad in terms of how long it is. "
Couldn't agree more
A good song is as long as necessary, if it is good but sounds too long, for the singer or the listener, it's not working - nothing to do with the length, it's down to the singing.
Ballads that are "too long" have become a feature of life where our attention span has been reduced , like Dickens, and Hugo (just re-read Les Miserablés - the longest book I've ever read), they remain classics for those who take the trouble to give them the attention they need.
Traditional ballads are interesting in this respect because, unlike many of our songs, they are stripped down to the basic story, little surplus information, the minimum of scene-setting, hardly any moralising commentary - just the bare-bones of the story.
In the end, it comes down to whether the singer is involved in the ballad and whether he/she can transmit that involvement to an audience.
The longest song (not a ballad) I've heard is one we recorded from a seventy year old singer, 'The True Lover's Discussion' - fifteen minutes long.
It is also one of the most unlikely to gain my attention - a non-narrative argument between two lovers on the merits of his and her religion - still gets me every time I play it.
THe singer, Martin Reidy, sang it one afternoon in a pub session and, for some reason, decided it was too long for the listeners and decided to cut it short.
He was shouted down by the audience, who were familiar with it, who demanded he sing it in full.
Martin had several songs of a similar length in his reperoire - he once told us, "I wouldn't give you tuppence for a short song".
Jim Carroll