Ballads

I saw this at Schuler Books & Music yesterday and would like to hear it. I am glad there is more to our country's musical history than ballads, but we get a lot of stories from them....romance, tragedy, history, humor. I recall studying traditional British ballads at Albion. It must have been part of an English literature course, and I remember somebody's (an author's?) attitude about them: that even though they were sung by the folk, they were to be read by the educated. That was an old opinion. Ballads are special. I sometimes tire of the repetition that is built into most of them, but I like how many begin in medias res, which is a useful approach for a lot of writing.