BALLADE, the technical name of a complicated and fixed form of verse, arranged on a precise system, and having nothing in common with the word ballad, except its derivation from the same Low Latin verb, ballare, to dance. In the 14th and 15th centuries it was spelt balade. In its regular conditions a ballade consists of three stanzas and an envoi; there is a refrain which is repeated at the close of each stanza and of the envoi. The entire poem should contain but three or four rhymes, as the case may be, and these must be reproduced with exactitude in each section. These rules were laid down by Henri de Croi, whose L' Art et science de rhetorique was first printed in 1493, and he added that if the refrain consists of eight syllables, the ballade must be written in huitains (eight-line stanzas), if of ten syllables in dizains (ten-line), and so on.

BALLADE: A French verse form consisting most often of three eight-line stanzas having the same rhyme pattern, followed by a four-line envoy. In a typical ballade, the last lines of each stanza and of the envoy are the same. Among the most famous ballades are Chaucer's "Ballade of Good Advice" and Rossetti's translation of François Villon's "Ballade of Dead Ladies," which asks in each stanza and in the envoy, "Mais ou sont les nieges d'antan?" ("But where are the snows of yesteryear?") The ballade first rose to prominence in the 14th and 15th centuries, popularized by French poets like Guillaume de Machaut and Eustache Deschampes. It was perfected in the 16th century by François Villon, but it later fell into disrepute when 17th century poets like Moliere and Boileau mocked its conventions.