From Fr. bal, baller, to dance (late Lat. ballare, and hence connected with "ballad," "ballet") comes "ball," meaning a dance, and especially a social gathering of people for the purpose of dancing.
[1] Martial (iv. 19. 6) calls the harpastum, pulverulentum, implying that it involves a considerable amount of exertion.
BALLADE, the technical name of a complicated and fixed form of verse, arranged on a precise system, and having nothing in common with the word ballad, except its derivation from the same Low Latin verb, ballare, to dance. In the 14th and 15th centuries it was spelt balade. In its regular conditions a ballade consists of three stanzas and an envoi; there is a refrain which is repeated at the close of each stanza and of the envoi. The entire poem should contain but three or four rhymes, as the case may be, and these must be reproduced with exactitude in each section. These rules were laid down by Henri de Croi, whose L'Art et science de rhétorique was first printed in 1493, and he added that if the refrain consists of eight syllables, the ballade must be written in huitains (eight-line stanzas), if of ten syllables in dizains (ten-line), and so on. The form can best be studied in an example, and we quote, as absolutely faultless in execution, the famous "Ballade aux Enfants Perdus," composed by Théodore de Banville in 1861:—
"Je le sais bien que Cythère est en deuil!
Que son jardin, souffleté par l'orage,
O mes amis, n'est plus qu'un sombre écueil
Agonisant sous le soleil sauvage.
La solitude habite son rivage.
Qu'importe! allons vers les pays fictifs!
Cherchons la plage où nos désirs oisifs