In plain English ...: March 2013

Ballads are short, anonymous narrative poems or songs which have been preserved and elaborated by oral transmission over the centuries; many have been passed from one country to another with suitable modifications to local needs. This happened to many Irish and Scottish ballads which sprang up in modified forms in America and Australia.

Because of their highly mutable oral form, it is almost impossible to date most ballads. After Caxton first set up the printing press in 1477, ballads spread rapidly.

They were an essentially popular tradition of the unschooled and illiterate, which recalled the early oral verse narratives of the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons.

Most ballads were set to music, as they were meant to be sung rather than read. Thus ballads are usually in simple quatrains (four-line stanzas) with a repeated refrain (the repetition of one or more lines). They are simple in form, plot and language, so as to make them easier to remember.

Ballads can be classified in many different categories, from border ballads about the rivalry between the English and the Scottish people, to ballads of outlaws celebrating the lives of outlaws or criminals such as the cycle of Robin Hood, to ballads of magic recounting stories about fairies, witches and ghosts, to ballads of love and domestic tragedy, to town ballads which served as a polemical commentary on difficult urban conditions.
Here you can find useful material for revision.

Lord Randal is a traditional Scottish ballad which tells "with a certain malicious humour" the sad tale of a noble called Lord Randal. It probably derives from the late Middle Ages.

https://poemanalysis.com/anonymous/lord-randall/

Geordie is a famous English ballad which presents a rather complex narrative: the story-teller, or narrator, meets a young woman who is lamenting the fate of her lover.

Its date of composition is unknown, it may be dated to the late Middle Ages; it is still widely known today and often sung in traditional as well as modernized versions.