# Merry Ballads

We also know the clumsy, literary originals of some merry ballads (víg ballada), such as “The Cuckolded Husband”. However, the merry folk versions of these, which spread throughout the country, are not only more valuable, but also have amalgamated into the popular ballad stylistic characteristics that existed in the literary form. Or let us refer to the difference that shows up, despite the connection, between the repetitious (often comically meaningless) lines and refrain-like sections of dance ballads and similar stylistic traits of 17th century poets. In these dance ballads a new kind of voice arises trying to express the disintegration of the closed feudal structure. A more liberated way of handling the story and a certain irony reflect an encounter with society as a whole, and in it of the serfs, with the newly established economic and social forces. Naturally, all of this is reflected through an indirect mode of expression, but in the development of the ballad genre it is precisely dance ballads that show this supposition to be correct.

Therefore, to all intents and purposes the genre of the dance ballad leads us from the ballad poetry of previous centuries to the group of ballads that developed in the 19th century. Needless to say, these 19th century folk ballads are also connected by numerous links to the tradition that developed in previous periods, even though at the same time their evolving new genre and stylistic characteristics separate them from their predecessors as well. It is usual to term this group the new-style ballad, on the example of melodic categorization.