Word: ballads
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...audience in Sanders Theater sathunched forward slightly, listening intently as Cecil Day Lewis last night began the second half of the Charles Eliot Norton lectures by tracing the history of the English street ballad...
...just want to sing one stanza of this ballad, since it's so beautiful," Lewis said, his precise diction changing to a soft, rather melodious song. The audience satback, quietly charmed by the distinguished, white-haired poet. A few men put their arms around their dates...
Lewis noted that a lack of tenderness has always characterized the poetry of the city. He quoted numerous English and Irish ballads, speaking with Midland and Irish accents when appropriate, to show that the street song is more often comic or dramatic than tender. "The golden age of innocence and love was in the country," he said. He added that if using the street ballad as social criticism requires "marking the literary muse into the literary prostitute, I'm in favor...
Lewis also described the street ballad's abundant subject matter. "The ballads, like modern newspapers, were filled with sex encounters, battles, and murders," he said. "The poor man then, as today, relished the predicaments of his superiors, whether of the gallows...
...Have love as you do this thing," cooed Folk Singer Joan Baez, "and it will succeed." It was a battle cry, not a ballad. Marching behind their Joan of Arc, who was wearing a jeweled crucifix, a thousand undergraduates of the University of California at Berkeley stormed four-story Sproul Hall, the school's administration building. For 15 hours they camped in the corridors, whanged guitars, played jacks, watched Charlie Chaplin movies. Stairwells be came "freedom" classrooms. An alcove was a kitchen where coeds made thousands of sandwiches for the all-night siege. The school had locked the bath...