To this day, ballads are still enjoyed by some individuals; many generations ago they were at the very heart of amusement. Passed on orally, they centred such interesting subjects as tragic love. Typically, although ballads are fairly simple, in that they do not tend to focus on characterization, they have a rapid dialogue, and are usually in the form of quatrains, and rhyming in abcb. As a traditional ballad "Bonny Barbara Allan" employs these traditional qualities and conventions: it is written in quatrains with an abcb rhyming scheme pattern, employs rapid dialogues, displays a lack of…
