The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
A moment's reflection should suffice to convince
any observant person of the real popularity
of repetition as a means of securing effectiveness.
The local wit in the village taproom, having happened
on a good thing, finds that the oftener he
says it the more it is appreciated. The catchphrase
of the low comedian in a cheap play
begins to take the fancy of the audience on its third
appearance, and its sixth is greeted with a roar.
And the spectator of the football match who
said " "
Hooray Hooray ! ! Hoo-blooming-ray !
was using incremental repetition for the sake of
effect.
Refrains, incremental or otherwise, form the
most conclusive evidence that we possess of the
derivation of ballads from choral song. Statistics,
we know, will prove anything but a careful
;
hundreds of ballads in
investigation of many
several languages certainly tends to show that all
those ballads, which have survived in a form that
includes a refrain,
are also those which in other
respects bear the most conspicuous marks of age
and
"
genuine popularity.
I say which have survived
in a form that includes a refrain " : that
proviso is necessary,
as we shall see when we come
to consider what may be called the literary history
of ballads the mischances that attend the
solidification of the fluid. We are not at liberty
to argue that, because a particular
ballad is
only
that
known to us in a form that lacks a refrain,
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