Ballads of Death and Disaster: The Role of Song in Early Modern News Transmission

Abstract

Ballads were a primary source of information about newsworthy events in the early modern period. Their aural reception meant that they were the most accessible medium for news, cutting across all divisions of class, education, gender, age and location. This essay explores how songs presented and mediated the news of executions and disasters both natural and human-caused, and in what ways they differed from prose accounts. The unique characteristics of ballads, such as the re-use of familiar tunes, texts in the first-person voice or for multiple voices, and their often communally performative nature, were closely linked to the early modern perception of death as a process in which the entire community engaged. Ballads acted both as a pedagogic tool, encouraging their listener-singers to interpret negative events as a warning of divine retribution, and as a meditative device, offering an opportunity to repent for one’s sins.