Ae fond kiss, and then we sever! Ae farewell, and then forever! Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, Warring sighs and goans I'll wage thee.The above, taken from a song by Robert Burns, is a beautiful and touching description of love and loss--but although he uses a ballad-type verse form, the emotional content is radically different from that of a period ballad:
Lord Gregory tore his yellow hair And made his heavy moan Fair Annie lay deid at his feet But his bonnie young son was ganeIt's difficult to put a 20-word limit on a lover's anguish at his beloved's death; but as you can see from the examples shown so far, emotional characterization in ballads is curt and to the point. Joy, sorrow, anger, loss--all of these reactions are contained in a few lines or at most a verse. In a way, this emotional restraint can be more moving than an obvious show of emotion; Lord Randal is a good example of this.
Reading a number of ballads, and getting a sense for the way emotion is uses and described, is the best way to get the emotional "feel" of an authentic ballad in your song.
2. Cultural Anachronisms. When writing a period ballad, it's important to be culturally consistant. This means using names and expressions extant at the time and place that the ballad describes. Charlotte, for instance, would be an inapropriate name for a ballad's heroine. Here's a (rather extreme) example:
It came upon a mornin', a bright and sunny day, when Steve and Jake and Tiffany were playin at croquet Up then cam a salesman, a suitcase in his hand, and said, "I have the finest wares in all of Engeland."Most cultural slip-ups will be more subtle than the above; they're usually things we take for granted, like hairbrushes and forks, that might not have existed in 16th century England.