Religious Ballads
The religious ballads by and large are folk-produced beyond any reasonable doubt. They are uniformly songs for individual singing, not for groups. The sung story was the thing. In one ballad it would be the story of some bad woman, Wicked Polly for example, “who died in sin and deep despair” and went to hell; in another, of some good woman, the Romish Lady for instance, who was burned at the stake for espousing the Protestant cause. Much ballad material was furnished also by the Bible. Scriptural events like the curing of the man sick with the palsy, the restoring of sight to blind Bartimeus, Daniel’s experience in the lions’ den, the raising of Lazarus, the baby Moses in the rushes, the Prodigal Son parable, the birth of Christ, His crucifixion and death,—all are retold in the ballads.
A younger variety of song which I include under the heading of religious ballads is that in which the singer tells his story in the first person. Such stories are those of the poor wayfaring stranger just a-going over Jordan, the departing preacher or missionary, a dying boy or girl, and even a pious gold hunter dying on his way to California. The story may be also the plaint of the religious “mourner”, the backslider, and the criminal sinner, or the exultant tale of the saved. Still another group of ballads is aimed more directly at the conversion of the “young, the gay, and proud.” They usually begin by telling the religious experience of the singer and close with a warning as to the tragic results of worldliness and an exhortation to turn from “this vain world of sin.” These songs are quite similar to the worldly ballads in form, and their tunes are, as will be pointed out presently, of the common folk stock.