Genres & Forms
Folk Ballad
The folk ballad is a lyric-epic song with a dramatically tense plot, centered on a tragic family or love event: betrayal, poisoning, death, or the transformation of a person into a plant or bird. The ballad is marked by dialogue, fragmentary narration, the fantasy of metamorphosis, and a fatal denouement. Classic Ukrainian ballads are 'Oh Do Not Go, Hryts,' 'Lymerivna,' and 'Oi chyie zh to zhyto, chyi zh to pokosy' (“Whose rye is this, whose swaths”: a daughter-in-law, cowed by her mother-in-law, turns into a poplar). The Ukrainian ballad fund was gathered by Osyp Rozdolsky, and the foundational edition 'Balady' (1987) was prepared by Oleksii Dei. The folk ballad nourished the literary one: its plots were reworked by Taras Shevchenko ('The Bewitched Woman,' 'The Poplar'), Levko Borovykovsky, and Stepan Rudansky.
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Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
Two lyric-epic folklore genres differing in structure and theme. The duma is heroic epic of the Cossack era with uneven verse, recitative and kobzar performance to the bandura; it celebrates captivity, the liberation struggle, Cossack life. The folk ballad is a song with a dramatically tense FAMILY or love plot (betrayal, poisoning, metamorphosis), strophic in structure and with a tragic denouement. The duma is about history and community; the ballad, about private tragedy.
