A short definition of the popular ballad (known also as the folk
ballad or traditional ballad) is that it is a song, transmitted orally, which
tells a story. Ballads are thus the narrative species of folk songs, which originate,
and are communicated orally, among illiterate or only partly literate
people. In all probability the initial version of a ballad was composed by a single
author, but he or she is unknown; and since each singer who learns and repeats
an oral ballad is apt to introduce changes in both the text and the tune,
it exists in many variant forms. Typically, the popular ballad is dramatic, condensed,
and impersonal: the narrator begins with the climactic episode, tells
the story tersely by means of action and dialogue (sometimes by means of the
dialogue alone), and tells it without self-reference or the expression of personal
attitudes or feelings.