How Ballads Portrayed Murder and Violence

Abstract

This chapter looks at how balladry approached the various kinds of murder, and how this apparently ahistorical crime could be represented differently across the centuries. Ballads tended to misrepresent actual levels of crime by foregrounding those that were seen as sensational or shocking because of the gender or status of the protagonists, such as murder committed by a woman. The chapter therefore focuses on the subject of gender and murder, to see how men and women who committed violence were treated differently both in the law and in balladry. Motives are also explored, with the devil regularly appearing in situations already featuring anger, alcohol, infidelity, or poverty. It also explores infanticide ballads. Given the increasingly draconian legislation against this crime in early modern Europe, the surprising dearth of ballads about this emotive topic reveals that consumers generally sympathised with young women who were vulnerable to the sexual advances of male predators.