Steve G's post on different senses of the term 'ballads' was interesting. For me, since the word can refer to a poem written in ballad form and metre, I don't think that it has to refer to something sung.

On people reciting ballads, mentioned by Steve, I had learned that this was the case from the online OED, which has the compound 'ballad reciter' as one of its entries. But sadly that source doesn't help us to know which were recited, and which were sung.

I wouldn't have any problem with the idea that sometimes people would 'recite' words intended to be sung, or conversely that they might produce sung versions of pieces written to be read or recited.

This thread really has drifted, but I would be interested to know more about the 'reciting' and what sources there are on it if nobody objected to yet further drift. Often it is when things drift that interesting snippets like this come up.