In striking and pleasing contrast to the old ballads are the modern ones with capitalization to please modern children. It may be noted that the texts of Keats’s “La Belle Dame,” and Campbell’s “Earl March,” are different from the versions usually included in children’s ballad-books. The texts followed here are those most lately approved by literary critics.
Ways in which ballads may be used in the classroom or during Poetry Hours:
1. _Reading aloud for development of literary taste._ This is the most important educational use of ballads. The teacher should read them aloud to the class, giving them all their native swing and quick pulsation. The minstrels, who composed them, often accented words to suit the length of their lines; so if the reader will lend her voice to the rhythm of the verse, the accents will fall where they belong. Such words as _country_, _harper_, _singer_, _damsel_, _lady_, and _battle_ should sometimes be accented on the last syllable, as _countrý_, _singér_, _harpér_, _ladý_.
2. _Memorizing and reciting._ Boys and girls enjoy learning ballads by heart. They do so with astonishing ease. The teacher may assign one ballad to the whole class; or she may divide the class into sections and assign a ballad to each section. This should be done at least two or three weeks before the period for recitation. The teacher may then call on one or more of the pupils to recite.
3. _Story-telling from the ballads._ The teacher may read aloud a ballad. She should read it two or three times to the class. Then the pupils may retell it in story form either orally or in writing.
4. _Dramatization._ Ballads are so dramatic and simple in their movement that they may be easily acted in the schoolroom with or without improvised scenery and costumes. The teacher or pupil may read aloud the ballad, while some of the boys and girls act it out in dumb show; or, better yet, the actors may recite the lines that belong to their parts, and the teacher may read aloud the descriptive parts only. Whenever a refrain occurs, as in “The Stormy Winds Do Blow,” the whole class may join in reciting it.
5. _Writing from memory._ The teacher may assign a ballad to the class to learn by heart; and then she may have the class write it out from memory following closely the spelling, punctuation, and dialect of the text.