A Book of Old Ballads — Volume 1

About

The first volume of Nichols's anthology of English and Scottish traditional ballads — a subset of items from the complete edition — presenting some of the finest traditional narrative poems in the English language: love betrayed, supernatural visitation, death by misadventure, and the spare declarative beauty of the ballad form. Individual ballads ('Barbara Allen,' 'Thomas the Rhymer') work as standalone readings of five to fifteen minutes.