The Ballad-Poetry Form

1.  Short Narrative.  It is usually arranged in 4 line stanzas with a meter that is disinctive.

2.  “The usual ballad meter is a first and third line with four stresses–iambic tetrameter–and then a second and fourth line with three stresses–iambic trimeter.”

3.  The rhyme scheme is abaab or abcb

4.  ” The subject matter is distinctive; almost always communal stories of lost love, supernatural happenings, or recent events.”

5.  “The ballad maker  uses popular and local speech and dialogue often and vividly to convey the story.  This is especially a feature of early ballads.”

Strand and Boland page 73 The Making of  a Poem