This thread has finally got me to register with this wonderful site into which I have been dipping for years. I am overawed by the erudition on display so offer my comments just as a lifelong lover of the ballads, not an academic.

I was lucky enough to have some ballads from the family including a fine version of The College Boy from my father's Auntie Meg. She could hold me spellbound though it was the considered opinion of the rest of the family that Meg had a rare voice for roaring 'Coal' i.e. she sounded like the most raucous street vendor.

Thinking of Auntie Meg and all the truly great ballad singers I have been fortunate enough to hear - Jeannie Robertson, Sheila Stewart, Lizzie Higgins, Jock Duncan, Maureen Jelks, Anne Neilson, Adam McNaughtan, Gordeanna McCullough and Brian Peters among them - what they have in common is a total belief in the story they are telling while they are telling it.

This does not mean they signed up to the supernatural or subscribed to the often dubious moral line taken in the ballad. It does mean that they were able, within the song, to be and see and feel as the characters in their narrative

There's been quite a lot of talk about what kind of audience can 'take' a ballad. In my own experience, virtually any kind! Ballads are stories and people of all ages love stories.

Working in a school recently I let a class of ten year olds hear tapes of schoolchildren from the area recorded almost sixty years ago. I was delighted to find that several of the songs were still in their repertoire but totally floored to find that two of them not only recognised but had a few verses of Lady Lido (Child 20). This led to a fascinating afternoon with me singing them a couple of other versions, the class starting to learn Lady Lido, and an interesting discussion on changing social mores which covered everything from the Nativity to Eastenders!

Let us have a bit more confidence in the ballad tradition. As I think someone said upthread, the ballads are not worth singing because they are old, they are old because they are worth singing!

And, btw, I tend to go with the Veronese theory on 'Lord Randal'.