18 WHAT IS A BALLAD?

and the same Is generally true of Serbian 'junacke pesme^and
Russian 'byliny'. They are only lyrical in so far as any relatively
short poem excites a swift and simple response, different from the
complex reactions to epic or dramatic poetry. Traditional verse
may be dramatic narrative, purely narrative, lyrically narrative,
narrative lyric, or purely lyrical.1 The fifth possibility lies out-
side the province of this book, but cannot be wholly ignored, since
the lyrical Injection into balladry varies greatly in different coun-
tries* There are some, such as Lithuania, which have no purely
narrative ballads, but a shading of lyric into narrative as subtle
as the spectrum; in other countries, such as Spain and Portugal,
the ballad is formally marked off from the lyric. Owing to their
stanzaic form it might be held that English ballads are lyrical
narratives, not pure narratives; want of such form does not prevent
some short Greek 'tragoudia' from being almost purely lyrical
When themes migrate, that which is a story in one land is an ex-
pression of mood in another; when technique migrates, the dances
which have made Portuguese women's songs lyrical are probably
akin to those which have given cause for the narratives of Scandi-
navia. One cannot set an absolute frontier between ballads and
folk-songs, though this book would become unmanageable were
It to attempt to cover all traditional poetry. We can, however,
observe the distinction of more or less, and keep our attention fixed
on the narrative end of the spectrum. Our attention may be
focused by those balladries (the Spanish, Danish, Serbian, and
Russian) which have the most marked individuality, the most uni-
form usage, and the greatest aesthetic value.

In the Scandinavian North ballads are sung and danced, and
they are named by words equivalent to the Danish Viser' (singular
Vise'), but also to 'kvasder' and 'rimer'. The terms are, like most
of those historically applied to ballad poetry, vague and by no
means exclusive; but there arose in Denmark, and spread to
Sweden, Norway, the Faeroes, and Iceland, a clearly defined Vise'
style, which entitles us to use this name for the northern type of
balladry. The Danish Viser' are narratives; the lyrical element is
strictly subordinate, and chiefly enters through the action por-
trayed or the parallelism to which the strophic pattern gives rise.
The verses are arranged generally as quatrains, but sometimes as

'See the discussion in L. K Goetz, Volksliedund Volkshben der Kroaten und
&srl)ent Heidelberg, 1936, i, pp. 2—4.