‘This is England’? Sense of Place in English Narrative Ballads

Abstract

Rightly or wrongly, ballads and folk songs collected in England are often thought to embody a sense of Englishness, even though substantial numbers of the items contained in such collections could equally be found in, say, Scotland, or even America. Nevertheless, ballad texts do reference topology and environment, and they do reference specific localities. However, while it is not difficult to think of some songs that unequivocally identify a fairly specific location (‘Rufford Park Poachers’ and ‘The Folkestone Murder’ are discussed here), many of the classical ballads in particular establish locality in much more elliptical fashion. Looking at a selection of ballads and their variants, both as collected songs and in broadside print, I aim to sketch out the way(s) in which ballads maintain a fragile, allusive sense of place. Albeit that it is inevitably overshadowed by the emphasis on action and emotion that characterise ballad style, what is here described as an ‘elliptical’ sense of place is nonetheless an important facet of the ‘feel’ of these ballads.