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Child Ballad: Difference between revisions
added new trope
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{{
[[File:YoungBekie.jpg|frame|Burd Isabel and Billy Blind, from ''Young Bekie'']]
[[I Thought It Meant|Has nothing to do with children.]]
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Many [[Murder Ballad|Murder Ballads]] are Child Ballads. [[Robin Hood]] has so many that Child lumps them all together in their own volume.
* "[[
* "[[Thomas the Rhymer]]" (#37)
=== Tropes common in the [[Child Ballad|Child Ballads]]: ===▼
* [[Abhorrent Admirer]]: "Kemp Owyne" (Child #34), "Alison Gross" (Child #35)
* [[All Girls Want Bad Boys]]: Several, including "Black Jack Davey" (Child #200)
* [[Bed Trick]]
* [[Betty, Veronica and Archie Switcheroo]]: "'Twa Sisters" theoretically portrays two sisters fighting over the same guy. The older one pushes her younger one into the river and lets her drown. Patricia C. Wrede had a different take in her short story "Cruel Sisters"; the main character Margaret, a middle child between eldest girl Anne and the youngest Eleanor. She sees that Eleanor lies regularly to get Anne in trouble, and Margaret retaliates out of spite. Neither of them was a complete Betty, and the guy who pursued them goes after Margaret at the next opportunity.
* [[Bride and Switch]]
* [[Brother
* [[Came Back Wrong]]: Above all else, never kiss a ghost in a ballad.
* [[Cycle of Revenge]]
* [[Damsel in Distress]]
* [[Death
* [[Death
* [[
* [[Downer Ending]]: Many ballads play this trope straight, others have endings that would have been considered [[Happy Ending|happy]] in days past, but fall short of the mark by today's standards. Some "happy endings" are [[Values Dissonance|pretty horrific]] to modern audiences.
** Ballad 110, wherein we learn that if a young woman is raped and the perpetrator is single, she will be forced to marry her rapist, whether she wants to or not.
* [[Due to
* [[Engagement Challenge]]
* [[Even the Guys Want Him]]: "Willie O'Winsbury" (Child #100)
* [[Evil Matriarch]]
* [[The Fair Folk]]
* [[Family
* [[Family
* [[Flower Motifs]]
* [[Gold Digger]]
* [[Hair of Gold]]: Always as "yellow hair" as in "[[
* [[Impossible Task]]: "Scarborough Fair" (Child #2) is pretty much the [[Trope Codifier]].
* [[Infant Immortality]]: Often averted quite gruesomely, especially in "Lamkin" (Child #93) .
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* [[Love Martyr]]
* [[Malicious Slander]]: You can actually die of this, in ballads.
* [[
* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]
* [[Offing the Offspring]]: "The Cruel Mother" (Child #20), "The Maid and the Palmer" (Child #21)
* [[Our Ghosts Are Different]]: Though, in ballads, it's ''always'' a bad idea to be in love with a dead person, they're not necessarily evil ''per se''. Ghosts and other revenants can pop up to drive their killers crazy ("The Cruel Mother", Child #20), or just to say goodbye ("Sweet William's Ghost", Child #77; "The Wife of Usher's Well", Child #79).
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* [[Secret Test of Character]]: Lovers are very fond of this, feigning poverty, or their own deaths, to discover whether the other really is in love with them.
* [[Sibling Triangle]]: the sister's motive in "The Twa Sisters"
* [[Standard Hero Reward]]: e.g. "The ''Golden Vanity''" (Child #286) {{spoiler|SUBVERTED TO THE MAX!!! The hero is told this is the reward, if he drills holes in the enemy man-o'-war, which he does (In a horribly poetic way: He let the water in, and it dazzled in their eyes, and he sunk them in the Low Lands Low.) He is then [[Did You Actually Believe?|betrayed by the captain]] and is abandoned to drown in the ocean.}} [[Standard Hero Reward]] be damned!
* [[Stock Puzzle]]: e.g. "Riddles Wisely Expounded" (Child #1), "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" (Child #46)
* [[Star
* [[Sweet Polly Oliver]]
* [[Together in Death]]: "Fair Margaret and Sweet William" (Child #74); some variants of "Barbara Allen" (Child #84).
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* [[Voluntary Shapeshifting]]: Evil shapeshifters will often have a [[Red Right Hand]] (e.g. "The House Carpenter", Child #243). Good shapeshifters are rare, but see "The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry" (Child #113).
* [[Wicked Stepmother]]
* [[A Year and
* [[Youngest Child Wins]]: Sometimes played straight, sometimes subverted: in "The Twa Sisters" (Child #10), the elder ''kills'' the younger.
* [[Your Cheating Heart]]: Combines well with [[Death
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[[Category:Oral Tradition]]
[[Category:Child Ballad]]
[[Category:
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