TO BE A BALLAD OR TO BE A FOLK BALLAD
             In this essay it will be proved that the ballad Sir Patrick Spence is a folk ballad. This
             will be done by giving the distinctive marks of a folk ballad as listed by M.H. Abrams
             in his A Glossary of Literary Terms. After giving the marks they will be pointed out in
             Sir Patrick Spence. A folk ballad is a song that tells a story, the author is usually
             unknown because many different people, who all added their own changes, sang the
             ballad. The narrator tells the story in a dramatic way, but with few words and
             without including his or her own feelings. The ballad itself consists of ballad stanzas
             with four lines and usually the second and fourth line rhyme. There is a formula
             which most ballads follow: There should be "stock descriptive phrases" "a refrain in
             each stanza" and "incremental repetition."
             The impersonal way of narrating is quite clear in Sir Patrick Spence. The
             story suddenly starts, there is no short introduction to be found and the whole
             tragedy about Sir Patrick, who sets out to sail for his king against his instincts and
             then dies in a storm, is told in only eleven stanzas. A good example of telling a lot
             with few to no words can be found in the transition from stanza 4 to stanza 5:
             The first line that Sir Patrick red,
             The next line that Sir Patrick red,
             "O wha is this has done this deid,
             To send me out this time o' the yeir,
             Suddenly the scenery has changed. Sir Patrick is not on the beach, reading the letter
             from the king anymore. Instead he has begun his trip and his ship is heading into a
             storm, but this is something the reader will have to come up with himself.
             When looking at the form of the ballad other di
             ...