Ballad stanza

The ballad stanza is a verse form much used in traditional verse. It takes its name from the ballad - not to be confused with the ballade (see Ballad - ballade). Although it is the most commonly used stanza form among the old ballads, it is not the only one; and it has been used by many writers since, among them Shakespeare, Keats and Wordsworth. It is sometimes caled ballad metre; in the Anglican and Scottish hymnals, it is known as common metre.

The ballad stanza consists of four lines. The first and third lines have four stresses, or beats; the second and fourth have three. (Alternatively, as OED defines it: "an iambic stanza of four lines containing 8 and 6 syllables alternately.") These two lines rhyme: the rhyme scheme is a b c b. This gives rise to such verses as

There lived a wife at Usher's Well

And a wealthy wife was she;

She had three stout and stalwart sons

And she sent them ower the sea.

They hadna been a week from her, ['hadna' = hadn't]

A week but barely ane, ['ane' = one]

When word cam' to the carlin wife ['carline wife' ~ witch]

That her three sons were gane.

They hadna been a week from her,

A week but barely three,

When word cam' to the carline wife

That her sons she'd never see.

The Wife of Usher's Well

Note the repetition, and the use of conventional phrases ('A week but barely ...') which provide convenient rhyme words ('ane' and 'three') which offer many possibilities to those in the oral tradition who are constantly trying both to memorise and to improve on their originals. Later, inded, in some versions of the same ballad, we hear

The cock he hadna crawed but once,

And clapped his wings at a',

When the youngest to the eldest said,

Brither, we must awa'.

In the sixteenth century an effect very similar to that of the ballad stanza was achieved by printing rhyming fourteeners, where the fourteen feet of the regular ballad stanza are divided not into four lines, two of four feet (tetrameters) and two of three (trimeters), but two of seven feet (heptameters). Instead of rhyming a b c b, they then rhyme a a.