A ballad is a narrative poem or song that tells a story in short stanzas, often with a simple rhyme scheme and a refrain. Traditional ballads were passed orally before being collected in print.

Folk ballads typically deal with love, betrayal, violence, or the supernatural, and they move quickly from incident to incident with little psychological analysis. The language is plain, the dialogue sparse, and the focus falls on action and outcome. Literary ballads, written by known poets, imitate the form while often adding greater complexity of language or theme. Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci” are famous examples of the literary type.

The ballad stanza commonly alternates lines of iambic tetrameter and trimeter, with a rhyme scheme of abcb. Refrains and incremental repetition help the story lodge in memory—an essential feature for oral transmission. Modern songwriters continue to draw on the ballad tradition whenever they need a compact narrative vehicle.

A story compressed into song-like stanzas and carried by rhythm and refrain is a ballad.