Excerpt from Ballads and Ballad Poetry The study of ballads is a study in very plain and simple poetry. The word ballad is some times loosely used, but generally people under stand by it a poem written to be sung and telling a story. There are many poems written to be sung, hymns, for instance, and all kinds of every day songs, but these we do not call ballads. There are many poems which tell stories, but are written without any idea of being sung, like Evangeline, and these we do not call ballads either. But in the early days of literature poetry is commonly sung, or recited in something of a sing-song way, and it generally tells a story be cause in the early days people are more interested in stories than in other forms of poetry. As people grow more and more cultivated, their poems are written down so that they no longer have the character that comes from being written for'musio, and as time goes on people have wider mterests in literature and care for other things in poetry than stories. So ballads are common only in the early days of any literature, or if in later days. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.