Child Ballad: Difference between revisions

 

=== Child Ballads with their own page: ===

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=== Tropes common in the [[Child Ballad|Child Ballads]]: ===

* [[Cycle of Revenge]]

* [[Damsel in Distress]]

* [[Distressed Dude]]

* [[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.

* [[Engagement Challenge]]

* [[Even the Guys Want Him]]: "Willie O'Winsbury" (Child #100)

* [[Flower Motifs]]

* [[Gold Digger]]

* [[Impossible Task]]: "Scarborough Fair" (Child #2) is pretty much the [[Trope Codifier]].

* [[Infant Immortality]]: Often averted quite gruesomely, especially in "Lamkin" (Child #93) .

* [[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]]

* [[Youngest Child Wins]]: Sometimes played straight, sometimes subverted: in "The Twa Sisters" (Child #10), the elder ''kills'' the younger.

 

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