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.