The _balada_ is not to be mistaken for the ballad of modern parlance. It is, as its etymology indicates, a song serving to accompany the dance. This destination proves at once its antiquity and its popularity. There is little doubt that in some form or other the _balada_ has subsisted from the times of Greek and Roman religious ceremonies down to our own days. In a country full of Southern beauty and Southern gaiety, its growth was a thing of natural necessity, like that of corn or wine. No political change or calamities could crush it. It survived the ravages of the crusaders in the thirteenth century, and the influences of ‘classical’ literature in the eighteenth. When Tristram Shandy entered the rich plain of Languedoc, the first thing he perceived was a lame youth whom Apollo had recompensed with a pipe, to which he had added a tambourin of his own accord, running sweetly over the prelude, and the reapers singing: Viva la joya Fidon la tristessa. Unfortunately there is again little or no record of the earlier development of this charming branch of poetry. But traces of its spirit and grace remain in the few specimens transmitted to us through the medium of the Troubadours, and these bear, in the freedom and variety of their metrical treatment, the distinct mark of their affinity with popular models. It ought to be added that the _baladas_ remaining to us are mostly by anonymous authors, which would tend to prove that the more celebrated and more dignified poets kept aloof from the unsophisticated species. On the other hand, some of the specimens show all the refinement and a good deal of the artificiality of Provençal versification. One of them, for instance, is written almost entirely in what is technically called _rims dictionals_—a curious metrical device, for an explanation of which the reader is referred to the technical portion of this book. A set rule for the structure of these dance-songs it would be difficult to find, but it appears that most of them have a few introductory lines by way of prelude, after which the stanzas themselves begin. The refrain also is not unfrequent, and would suggest the falling in of a chorus—the only sign, by the way, of the existence of that important musical component. For the artistic _balada_—differing in this essentially and significantly from the popular roundelay—is supposed to be sung and the accompanying dance to be performed by a single person. The idea of a dance _en masse_, or even in couples, verbally and mimetically addressing each other, seems excluded. Hence the subjective character of the poetry. By its contents the _balada_ could not be distinguished from any other love-song. In some cases, indeed, its identification would be altogether difficult but for the heading in the MS., or the actual occurrence of the term _balada_ in the poem itself, as found, for instance, in the charming song to be presently quoted. The exclamations