2.1
Ballads and Working Class Writing

by Ian Syson

What's a ballad?

formal characteristics

• rhyme scheme;
• rhythm;
• refrain or chorus;
• patterns of repetition;
• often has a narrative structure

relation to song

• often slow songs get called ballads
• Bob Dylan consciously wrote ballads
• many ballads have been put to music

function

• mediating between oral and literate cultures
• disseminating information
• entertainment
• aiding the growth in literacy

literary ballads

Keats

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.  

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
 So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.  

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew
And on thy cheeks a fading rose   
Fast withereth too.  

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful�a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild.

Ballads are significant because I think they are the one direct connection that the contemporary working class has with its own literary history -- via song. And while the ballads that I deal with are largely anglo-celtic the same relation applies to non-anglo working class cultures.

Ballads in Australia (go to extended version of notes below)

Broadsides

The broadside ballad developed in Britain as a means of getting information and entertainment out to a proletarian audiences very quickly.

• Sometimes political;
• as often not;
• usually entertaining;
• often scurrilous;
• often written before the event.

This ballad culture came to Australia but until 1830 or so there are no indigenous broadside ballads recorded in Australia.

Prior to this time the ballads that told of conditions in Australia were written from an English perspective.

The ballads and songs that tell of the convicts' experience in Australia, are a form particular to the period of transition from oral to oral/literate forms in the history of British working class culture. The broadside ballad is a form which had a place in both oral and literate cultures.

Many of them tell of the common experience of suffering, hardship and struggle endured by most people living under a system that served the interests of the British ruling class.

Some of these ballads, like �Botany Bay, A New Song' (c.1790), also profess to tell of the convicts' awareness of the class implications of their status as convicts.

Let us drink a good health to our schemers above,
Who at length have contrived from this land to remove
Thieves, robbers and villains, they'll send them away,
To become a new people at Botany Bay.

Some men they say have talents and trades to get bread,
Yet they sponge on mankind to be cloathed [sic] and fed,
They'll spend all they get, and turn night into day,
Now I'd have all such sots sent to Botany Bay.

There's gay powder'd coxcombs and proud dressy tops,
Who with very small fortunes set up in great shops,
They'll run into debt with design ne'er to pay,
They should all be transported to Botany Bay.

We have to wait for this ballad by Frank the Poet (perhaps) for the first important indigenous ballad.

Warren Fahey on convict ballads and singing Moreton Bay

Moreton Bay

One Sunday morning as I went walking
By Brisbane waters I chanced to stray
I heard a convict his fate bewailing
As on the sunny river bank I lay
I am a native from Erin's island
But banished now from my native shore
They stole me from my aged parents
And from the maiden I do adore

I've been a prisoner at Port Macquarie
At Norfolk Island and Emu Plains
At Castle Hill and at cursed Toongabbie
At all these settlements I've been in chains
But of all places of condemnation
And penal stations in New South Wales
To Moreton Bay I have found no equal
Excessive tyranny each day prevails

For three long years I was beastly treated
And heavy irons on my legs I wore
My back from flogging was lacerated
And oft times painted with my crimson gore
And many a man from downright starvation
Lies mouldering now underneath the clay
And Captain Logan he had us mangled
All at the triangles of Moreton Bay

Like the Egyptians and ancient Hebrews
We were oppressed under Logan's yoke
Till a native black lying there in ambush
Did deal this tyrant his mortal stroke
My fellow prisoners be exhilarated
That all such monsters such a death may find
And when from bondage we are liberated
Our former sufferings will fade from mind

The narrative perspective is very much from Australia. But why did it take so long?

Several important things were missing until this time

• a large radical and moneyed reformist culture
• easy access to printing facilities and,
• the kind of limited freedom of distribution available in Britain
• a literate and politically active proletariat.

None of this is to say poems of a radical and scurrilous kind written from an Australian perspective were't being produced and circulated in the very early colony

However it is not until the 1850s the ingredients for a substantial literary political culture were in place.

And indeed the ballad becomes the primary literary form for many working class Australians who consume it via

• the popular press
• oral transmission
• through song

A lot of the music we listen to today has a direct relation to this literary form. Think about 'Khe Sanh' or 'Star Hotel' by Cold Chisel and measure them against the formal characteristics mentioned earlier

1. Khe Sanh from Youtube
2. Star Hotel from Youtube

• rhyme scheme
• rhythm
• refrain or chorus
• patterns of repetition
• often has a narrative structure

What has been lost in all of this? Typically these political message of both songs has been drowned in a sea of commercialism.

What happens when the Australian Cricket team sings Khe Sanh as an act of celebration?

While the broadside ballad culture was never a fully political one, its contemporary descendant has lost almost all sense of the political. It's one of the great political tricks performed by capital in its relentless search to commodify all culture, even its radical edge.

Though I'm not sure the following song will ever be able to be fully commodified.

The Internationale (many dead links)

Chorus
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.

Alistair Hulett version

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