For most people the ballad possesses an aura of quaintness, of temporal and social remoteness that invites either patronising academic dissection or folksy sentimentality. This aura Alan Bold aims to destroy by contradicting various misconceptions: for instance, that the ballads were created communally, or that they were mere diversions exclusively for the primitive, unlettered and unwashed. As he remarks, their audience was hardly more superstitious than we are, with our shelves of ghost stories and detective mysteries; and however much the ballads satisfied a fascination with the magical, their basic appeal was realistic, concentrating on themes of sex (whether ethereally romantic or bluntly erotic) and violence (especially the downfall of the rich and powerful).

Bold is scholarly and convincing in the way in which he relates the genre to social forces. When, for example, he comprehensively and succinctly analyses the ballads' structure and style – regular rhythms, echoic devices, formulae, stocks of imagery (not to be dismissed, unless Homer is also) he not only finds their origins in the necessities of an oral tradition (the obvious point to make) but also connects them to their users' sense of fate.

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