Tabla de Contenidos:
  • Popular songs and the image of a nation
  • Heroic bards and the "romantic wildness" of an Anglo-Saxon past
  • Countering mythic claims
  • Balladry as a childhood for national genius
  • The concept of orality and the collector of "Tradition"
  • The ballad community as an egalitarian, pastoral ideal
  • Orality, primitivism, and an improvising folk community
  • Real singers, individual authorship, and diverse ballads
  • Archaism and "communal re-creation" in ballad tunes
  • Families of tunes and the tenacity of tradition
  • Ballad music as an heirloom of British culture
  • Variation and continuity in ballads present
  • Class politics and the producers and production of songs
  • Orality and teh formulaic composition of ballads
  • Creativity, community, and the individual songmaker
  • People and their songs as diverse phenomena
  • Tradition, literacy, and the ballad marketplace
  • Performance, audience, social conditions, and tradition
  • Blues ballads and the syncretism of Anglo and African traditions.