[Marshall Begel]

I haven't scanned much accentual meter, but I'm having fun placing beats. 4 beats per line here, right? There are a few that I can find only 3, and a couple I can't get less than 5. Are these intentional? Or should I point them out?

[Glenn Wright]

Narrative poems, especially ballads rooted in myth and folklore, are one of my guilty pleasures. Very enjoyable read, Barbara.
Glenn

[Richard G]

Hi Barbara,
I too like a ballad but I struggled with this one. Perhaps because I didn't know the original. I found the narrative hard to follow (the fact that there are two shes/hers doesn't help) and it didn't feel as modern as I was expecting (stockinged feet, for instance.)
I think you could cut S8, it doesn't seem to make much of a contribution to your retelling (and the Linne/him/sin/been rhymes set up an expectation that isn't met.) Similarly stanzas 1 and 2 aren't doing much either.

I doesn't solve the (or maybe just my) narrative problem but perhaps a change in verse order might help?

10, 11, 12 // 3, 4, 5 // 6, 7, 9 // 13, 14, 15, 16

Regards,
RG

[Carl Copeland]

I love a good ballad too, Barbara, and enjoyed comparing yours with the Child version. A few thoughts:

I can get four beats out of every line if I work at it, but my first inclination is to give a number of them five or three. For example, to get four beats out of “Nobody knows where he’s been,” I have to stress both “knows” and “where,” which is unnatural for me. On the other hand, I’d naturally give “The enchantment failing, he was nearly free” four beats in speech, but that requires three consecutive unstressed syllables, which is normally taboo in metrical verse. Like Marshall, I’m not sure whether any of this is a problem for accentual meter.

There’s some clichéd language—the first two lines of S3, for example—but that may be less of a problem for a riff on a traditional ballad. “Stockinged” didn’t bother me, but the Yoda-speak “mum as a stone I must be” in S6L2-3 clashes with the natural, modern idiom you’ve chosen. S6L3 is one of the lines I want to give five beats, so how about something like:

“I’ve given my word to be mum as a stone,
but it’s nothing to do with you, Janet—

I’m not quite sure what “Tom Linne is all the man she loves” means. Is everything she loves? Is the only man she loves?

Typo: foresee.

Originally Posted by Richard G

I found the narrative hard to follow (the fact that there are two shes/hers doesn't help)

I wasn’t going to mention this, because I have a talent for misreading everything that can possibly be misread, but I first thought Janet kept Tom locked up at home while she went to the club!

[Barbara Baig]

Yes, indeed, Joe. Thanks for your reply, and apologies for my own late one: the poem was put on hold for a while because I posted it too soon.--Barbara

[Marshall Begel]

Richard: Yeah, I had to track down the original to make sense of (especially) the animals. I recommend getting into the Gaelic swing with
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2009/...e-to-scotland/

Barbara, I paced 4 beats in all lines except:
Too few: Nobody knows where he’s been."
Too many: Holding him tight, she says, “This man is mine!”

Otherwise, I got confused by S2:
"Not even Janet?" "Nope, I asked."
as a dialogue between 2 unnamed characters. Maybe just continue the monologue, like: "Not even Janet has seen him around"

Lastly, I wondered why the witch would curse Janet by wishing blindness on Tom, as if his disability would be hurtful to her (or make him less desirable).

[Barbara Baig]

Marshall, Glenn, Richard G., Carl--
Thank you all so much for reading and responding to this experiment! I'm so glad to learn the places where you got confused or wondered about the meter. Now I know what I need to fix.

As for the meter, you wouldn't think it would be that hard--four strong beats per line--but, as a couple of you noted, I don't always get it right. (Marshall, it's not intentional! and do feel free to point out specific places where I goofed.) ( Carl, three unstressed syllables between two stressed ones is permitted. Interesting to me--and possibly to others--I've read in two reliable sources that native English speakers feel uncomfortable with more than three unstressed syllables between the stressed ones, so this principle is true for prose, as well.)

Dana Gioia has an excellent article on accentual meter here: http://danagioia.com/essays/writing-...centual-verse/

"Tom Linne" is all the man she loves" would certainly be better as "Tom Linne is the only man she loves."

Richard, thanks for your suggestions for re-arranging the stanzas. I will definitely try this.

Carl, are you able to point to language in the poem that made you think Janet was keeping Tom a prisoner? Or was it something missing that made you think that way?

Did anyone pick up on the "beast in the man" idea (which is not in the original ballad)? If so, what did you think of it?

This experiment was tricky to do (though lots of fun) in part because, as you all probably know, ballads work primarily by the technique of "montage"--that is, they show scenes or dialogue, leaving out all the connecting narrative. It's often hard to figure out who's talking, and when. With the 43 stanzas of the original, I didn't always know what was going on! I might be working "in the tradition" to similarly confuse my readers--but I'd rather not do that. So thanks for letting my know about the places that you found confusing.

I'm pleased to find some other lovers of ballads here. Glenn--I'm so glad you found this an enjoyable read…must ballads be a "guilty pleasure," though…?

Thanks to all--Barbara

[Barbara Baig]

Hi Marshall,
We just cross-posted. Thanks for that link and for your suggestions for clarifying the meter and what's going on in the story.

Actually, the witch is cursing Tom because he's figured out a way to escape her (and why that particular curse? I don't know: it's in the original.) If you have time, I'd like to know the language in the poem that made you think she was cursing Tom.

Thanks so much!
Barbara

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Barbara Baig

Carl, three unstressed syllables between two stressed ones is permitted.

Three unstressed syllables between two stresses is perfectly natural in speech, so I’ve always thought it should be doable in verse, but I’m usually told that the second of three non-stresses is always promoted. Accentual verse may escape this, though I wonder whether Gioia’s “implied fourth rule” might apply: “avoid metrical ambiguity by reducing or eliminating secondary stresses that might confuse where the beat falls.” Thanks for that article, btw; I’ll study it more closely.

Originally Posted by Barbara Baig

Carl, are you able to point to language in the poem that made you think Janet was keeping Tom a prisoner? Or was it something missing that made you think that way?

There are clues that “she” in S3 is a new character, but it wasn’t quite enough for me on first reading—or for Richard, apparently—so I had Tom stealing out of Janet’s house and then running into her out on the town. No wonder she was shocked! This version doesn’t make much sense to begin with and gets loonier with every line, so it may require a legendary misreader like myself to take it as far as I did.

[Barbara Baig]

Thanks, Carl. I can see I have a lot of work to do to make this story less confusing! --Barbara