Mood. Mood, or atmosphere, is the emotion created in the reader by art or all of a literary work. A writer creates a mood through judicious use of concrete details. As you read, consider the mood of each of the ballads.
Rhyme Scheme and Ballad. A rhyme scheme is a pattern of end rhymes, or rhymes at the ends of lines of verse. The rhyme scheme of a poem is designated by letters, with matching letters signifying matching sounds. A ballad is a simple narrative poem in four-line stanzas, usually meant to be sung and rhyming abcb. Pay attention to the rhyme scheme of each of these ballads.
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“Sir Patrick Spens” is a perfect example of a popular English folk ballad. Folk ballads were composed orally and passed by word-of-mouth from generation to generation and functioned like sensational news reports. Traveling musicians would sing ballads telling about tragic or newsworthy events such as shipwrecks, hangings, robberies, and murders. “Sir Patrick Spens” tells of the shipwreck of a Scottish knight and his men, a story that may be based on an actual thirteenth-century tragedy. Although warned that the voyage would be dangerous, Sir Patrick Spens still undertook the journey from which no one returned.
“The Great Silkie of Shule Skerrie” was collected in 1852 from an elderly woman in the Shetland Islands off the far northern coast of England. Many ballads, such as this one, dealt with improbable or supernatural occurrences. This ballad is based on common Scandinavian folk tales about silkies, seal-like creatures who lived in the sea but could come to land and take human form. Legends about swan maidens, mermaids, and related creatures are among the common folk inheritance of the European nations.
Write about your reactions to an event that has recently been reported in the news.
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