Mrs. Brown of Falkland: A Singer of Tales?

Abstract

AS ENGLISH LITERATURE'S MOST ORAL GENRE, it was inevitable that the traditional ballad should sooner or later invite study on the basis of the evolved by Milman H. Parry and Albert Bates Lord from their study of the Yugoslav guslars 1 and since applied with startling and controversial effect to a range of genres, including the Homeric and Germanic epics, the chansons de gestes, medieval romances, and other verse traditions.2 As a matter of contemporary controversy in such a number of fields, the oralformulaic theory requires no detailed exposition here. Suffice it to recall that, according to the theory, a performer or singer in an oral tradition does not memorize and reproduce a fixed text of his song, but improvises at each performance a new text, on the basis of a memorized narrative skeleton, using a series of techniques, the most important being the formula, the formulaic system, and the theme. At first glance, the ballad does not seem a promising field for such exploration. In contrast to the Yugoslav epics on the basis of which the oral-formulaic theory was evolved, and the genres (also mainly epics) to which it was first applied, the ballad is short, stanzaic (with all that this implies for the recurrence of melodic patterns and the restrictions of rhyme), and altogether a much more tightly structured form, providing, it would seem, much less opportunity for the improvisational re-creation of the individual singer. Albert B. Lord himself, in a passing remark, implied as much,3 and others have done the same.4 Holger Olof Nygard, discussing another problem-the application of