Page "Ballad" Paragraph 10

In all traditions most ballads are narrative in nature, with a self-contained story, often concise and relying on imagery, rather than description, which can be tragic, historical, romantic or comic.

Themes concerning rural laborers and their sexuality are common, and there are many ballads based on the Robin Hood legend.

Another common feature of ballads is repetition, sometimes of fourth lines in succeeding stanzas, as a refrain, sometimes of third and fourth lines of a stanza and sometimes of entire stanzas.