In many ways, our modern folk ballads echo the long tradition of the medieval pastourelle. In this genre, the narrator, often a knight, stops in the woods. After all, woods are always erotic dream space where anything can happen. There the knight meets a shepherdess, often named Marion, who is longing for Robin, her absent shepherd lover. The tension between love, infidelity, rape, voyeurism, and the plays between high and low class and language have been rehearsed many times since the genre was first preserved in the twelfth century. Another classic feature of the pastourelle and its descendant ballads is the dorelot, or refrain. These refrains can mimic birdsong, quote other ballads, and can range between nonsense syllables to intelligible text. The word dorelot is just one variant of all the “tura luras,” “lully lullays,” “dilly dillies,” “diddle diddles,” “fa la las,” “tra la las,” and “Polly Wolly doodles” heard Continue Reading →