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6.What is the second category of British newspapers?

2. Render the following sentences into Russian

1. Owners were forced into new ways of increasing productivity while cutting costs.

2. Other magazines cover interests such as computers, rural pastimes, gardening, railways, cooking, architecture, do-it-yourself skills and sports.

3. Competition between the BBC and independent television is strong, and the battle of the ratings indicates the popularity of offerings.

4. Internet users think the internet is as reliable as television, but those who do not use the internet trust the television more as a source of information.

3. Give the English equivalents for:

воспитывать; развлекать; удовлетворять; требовать; требовательная аудитория;

спутниковое и кабельное вещание; цифровой; точка зрения; СМИ.

6).What is the second category of British newspapers?

4. Fill in the blanks with the words and expressions from the text

1. In Britain it generally … the print industries (par1)

2. Their growth and variety have greatly … information dispersal, news availability and entertainment opportunities. (par 2)

3. But the media provoke …about what is socially and morally permissible in their content and methods. (par 3)

CHAPTER VI ENGLISH FOLKLORE

Read the Vocabulary:

to stem from-происходить, произрастать weird-странный

appeal-призыв abundant -обширный

depicted-отражены to transmit-передавать

to be confined to-быть привязанным к чему -то antecedents -предшественники

appeal-призыв abundant -обширный

depicted-отражены solemnity -

The British Isles have a rich diversity of folklore, stemming in part from the mix of cultural identity from region to region. They have had a turbulent history, invaders and settlers have brought with them their own beliefs and lore, which have become included into older traditions. Some stories seem to be widespread, such as the tradition of sleeping warriors under hollow hills and the wild hunt, often incorporating local heroes. The main reason to uniqueness of British culture certainly lies on the surface: Great Britain is an island populated by the nation that had to grow up and go all the long way of its history alone being separated from the rest of the world by great amounts of water. This very characteristics turned them into not only a curious nation, but also an interesting and special one, whose history and culture are one of the richest in the world.

The studies of the British culture and therefore understanding of the national character of the English cannot stand apart from the research of its important product – folklore. The folklore and folk customs of England are rich and varied. Many customs are ancient, passed down generation to generation from Germanic to Celtic ancestors. Others are more modern creations while others were neglected or forgotten over the years. Whatever their roots or whatever their age, they all make up the rich and diverse folk heritage of England. English folklore is the folk tradition which has developed in England over a number of centuries. Some stories can be traced back to their roots, while the origin of others is uncertain or disputed.

A great deal of folklore and local legends has been lost because they are not passed by word of mouth as much as they used to be. Only in the 18P^thP century amateurs of English culture turned to collecting and studying the national folklore. Local lore and legends were often clues to solving landscape mysteries as well as being part of the beliefs of previous generations and part of the national history. English folklore could be considered a brief look at the not well known mythology of the Anglo-Saxons, though it also has Welsh and Scottish influences, perhaps evidence of a predominantly non-hostile Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain or it could be because of the Norman's replacement of a great deal of English legends with Britonic ones.

The art of story-telling has been cultivated in all ages and among all nations of which we have any record; it is the outcome of an instinct implanted universally in the human mind. By means of a story the savage philosopher accounts for his own existence and that of all the phenomena which surround him. National differences can be depicted in the folklore of definite nation.

The national peculiarities of the British people were formed due to many factors, such as geography, historical, social and economical development. The main system of values, beliefs and traditions is reflected in the British folklore (in this article main attention is devoted to ballads and fairy tales).

The British always attach great importance to tradition. Many of them still feel strongly about the monarchy because it adds a great deal of colour to their life. The British like court ceremonies, jubilees, shoes and parades. Some ceremonies are performed every day. One of them is the colourful Changing of the Guard by the mounted guards of the Household Cavalry in Whitehall.

Another great spectacle is the formal ceremony of the changing the royal guard in the forecourt of Buckingham Place. The Queen`s Guard, traditionally dressed in their scarlet tunics and characteristic busbies, parade from St.James`s Palace to join the contingent at Buckingham Place, while the new guard, led by a military band, arrive from Chelsea. The British calendar is full of many other events which add merriment and pageantry to British life. Although the British may not be willing to admit it, they love tradition and colourful displays.

Most of the British customs, traditions, beliefs and values can be found in the folklore, namely in ballads and fairy tales.

Ballads are a fascinating subject of study not least because of their endless variety. It is quite remarkable that ballads taken down or recorded from singers separated by centuries in time and by hundreds of kilometers in distance, should be both different and yet recognizably the same. The Ballad has been described as a lyrical narrative of varying length that has an exact metrical structure and a liberal use of rhyme. These poems are among a group of anonymous songs that were probably written between 1200 and 1700 in Northern England and Scotland. Their origins are a bit controversial; scholars can't agree on how they were composed, or how old individual ballads are. Most were not written down and studied until the eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries.

Throughout the Middle Ages ballads, short folk songs that tell stories, were very popular. The Celts and Anglo-Saxons undoubtedly composed ballads, but we have no record of these early works. The oldest recorded ballad in the English language, called Judas, was written down in a late 13th с. manuscript. Many of the ballads, however, first appeared in written form with the introduction of the printing press (1476).

The anonymous folk ballad (or popular ballad), was composed to be sung. It was passed along orally from singer to singer, from generation to generation, and from one region to another. During this progression a particular ballad would undergo many changes in both words and tune. The medieval or Elizabethan ballad that appears in print today is probably only one version of many variant forms. Primarily based on an older legend or romance, this type of ballad is usually a short, simple song that tells a dramatic story through dialogue and action, briefly alluding to what has gone before and devoting little attention to depth of character, setting, or moral commentary. It uses simple language, an economy of words, dramatic contrasts, epithets, set phrases, and frequently a stock refrain. The familiar stanza form is four lines, with four or three stresses alternating and with the second and fourth lines rhyming. For example:

It was ín and abóut the Mártinmas tíme,

When the gréen léaves were a fálling,

That Sír John Gráeme, in the Wést Countrý,

Fell in lóve with Bárbara Állan

“Bonny Barbara Allan”

It was in the 18th century that the term ballad was used in England in its present sense. Scholarly interest in the folk ballad, first aroused by Bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), was significantly inspired by Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802). Francis Child's collection, English and Scottish Popular Ballads (5 vol., 1882–98), marked the high point of 19th-century ballad scholarship. More than 300 English and Scottish folk ballads, dating from the 12th to the 16th century, are extant. Although the subject matter varies considerably, five major classes of the ballad can be distinguished—the historical, such as “Otterburn” and “The Bonny Earl o' Moray”; the romantic, such as “Barbara Allan” and “The Douglas Tragedy”; the supernatural, such as “The Wife of Usher's Well”; the nautical, such as “Henry Martin”; and the deeds of folk heroes, such as the Robin Hood cycle.

Ballads, however, cannot be confined to any one period or place; similar subject matter appears in the ballads of other peoples. Ballad (derived from the old French bailer, to dance) is the name applied over all European countries to any simple, direct story told in simple verse. It was first of all a song sung to the rhythmic movement of a dancing chorus. The ballad belongs to the class of productions in verse known by the name of Volks-lieder. It sprang from the bosom of the people. It was composed by one of the people for the pleasure of the people. Perhaps that which now remains of this class of literature once had a particular shape that is now lost. In any case, the incidents of many of the ballad stories, the poetic images, and even the dramatic manner are frequently common to different countries. Of the classes of ballad thus generally diffused there are five main classes: -

(1) Ballads of the supernatural, including those of a ghostly character and those based on a belief in fairies and fairyland.

(2) Romantic ballads, dealing with the familiar events of life - of love, tragic death, etc.

(3) Ballads of adventure. Under this class come several of the Border ballads and those relating to Robin Hood.

(4) Humorous ballads, usually the rendering into verse of some pointed popular jest.

(5) Nursery ballads, including lullabies.

The ballad, even in later times, appears to have been occasionally sung as well as said. Some pieces are made up of prose in addition to verse; the dialogue and the purely lyrical parts are in metre, while the narrative is mainly given in prose. Examples of this are found both in France and Scotland. There is no precise date as to the age of extant ballad literature. English and Scottish ballads, however, which can be traced to the fourteenth century, are probably the earliest of surviving forms of note.

The purely English ballads, though not lacking in spirit and humour, are often commonplace in style. Mr. Andrew Lang (Ward's English Poets) has put forward as an explanation of this that the English ballads as we have them have lost their original character as Volks-lieder. The transcriber, he maintains, has cut down the material to his hand, till the dullness of prose only was left. It is probably the case, however, that they are there in almost their first shape, though why they should fall so markedly below those of the North in merit it is somewhat difficult to argue. It has been ascribed to climatic influences. English scenery, it is alleged, is comparatively uninspiring; and hence, English popular verse lacks the imagination, the fire, and speed that distinguish the like productions in the North. Still there are exceptions, it must be said, to this in England; there are a few early English ballads of undoubted literary value.

One remarkable feature of the old ballad consists in its half curious, half familiar treatment of the supernatural. There is exhibited a peculiar mysticism, sometimes weird, sometimes playful.

In Clerk Saunders, Sir Roland, and in some ballads we have the same striking presentation of the unseen. Nothing again can be more delightful than the pictures of Fairyland that meet us every now and then in ballad poetry. In Tamlane, and in the stories of Thomas the Rhymer and. their Scandinavian variants this is charmingly limned. We see its elfin beauty in the brightness of the queen of Faery, in the "bonny road that winds about the fernie brae," and in various other picturesque touches. These ballads no doubt truly reflect in their solemnity and gaiety of sentiment the imaginative beliefs of the people in that idyllic world in which the minstrel lived and moved.

The ballads of a romantic caste are mostly concerned with strange and touching incidents of love and war. Pathos and joy naturally divide their claims in the subject matter. At one time, as in Love Gregor, the bride is sacrificed to the hate of a mother. Again, as in the Gay Gosshawk, the wit of the lovers overcomes every obstacle. Family feuds are frequently the occasion of a telling episode, as in Barthram's Dirge, the Three Ravens, and other pieces equally grave and impressive. The most prominent examples of ballads of adventure are the riding ballads of the Scottish border, and those that deal with Robin Hood. Of the former collection there are brilliant instances in Jamie Telfer and Kinmont Willie, passages in both of which have been authoritatively characterised as Homeric in dramatic vividness. Mr. Lang describes the ballads about Robin Hood as "exceedingly English, long and dull." This, however, must be accepted with a considerable qualification. The humorous ballads in various countries are often marked by clever and free play of fancy. Perhaps the best belong to Germany and Scotland.

The time that produced the ballad was wholly before the diffusion of books: with the printing press the office of the minstrel disappeared. This poetical form nevertheless has been cultivated with success in later times, especially in England and Germany. The disuse of the older dialect in Scotland has greatly hindered further accomplishment in the art in that country, though Scott and Allan Cunningham composed ballads of distinct merit in somewhat close imitation of the early examples. In England last century a like attempt was made, only, however, to incur ridicule, as in Johnson's famous parody. But in recent times ballads of a distinctively powerful kind have been written by Coleridge, Rossetti, and Tennyson. In Germany the art of the minnesinger has been splendidly maintained by Burger, Schiller, Goethe, and Uhland.

The history of ballad-collecting is a matter of some interest. Such pieces, at least in England, were first printed on broadsheets and sold by pedlars. About the time of the Restoration these broadsheets were gathered by collectors as curios; Lord Dorset, Dryden, and Pepys were among such antiquarians. Reprints of any note were first undertaken in the south by Tom Durfey, in the north by Allan Ramsay. Bishop Percy, however, made the great step in this direction by the publication of his Reliques, which was based on old copies of ballads in a folio MS. that had come into his hands. In Scotland Herd published what had been called the first useful collection from oral tradition in 1769. Scott, in his Border Minstrelsy, continued to a considerable extent the work of Herd. Motherwell's collection (1827) is marked by critical care. A recent important addition to the series of ballad texts is that of Messrs. Furnivall and Hales (London, 1867-8, 3 vols.). This is taken from the folio MS. of Percy. Critics agree in placing first among recent collections in interest and scholarship that of Professor Child (English and Scottish Ballads, Boston, U.S., 1864). Other valuable books on the subject are those of Ritson, Kinloch, Jamieson, Sharpe, Aytoun, and Allingham. The old ballads are a very valuable part of poetical literature. Though composed in a rude era, they were the work of men of true artistic genius; the themes, moreover, touch on almost all the chords of human experience. They contain, and vividly set forth in their own way, the elements of the deepest tragedy or gayest comedy. The period of their production would also seem to be in their favour as compositions to be enjoyed by later ages. The spring-time of history that gave them light has lent them a delightful brightness of delineation both in regard to nature and man. Round them, as round the work of Chaucer, we have a poetic atmosphere full of charm, a sweetness that belongs also to the dawn and May. This will always attract; but the material and style of the ballads in themselves must still secure genuine appreciation. Broadsheet ballads (also known as broadside ballads) were cheaply printed and hawked in English streets from the sixteenth century. They were often topical, humorous, and even subversive; the legends of Robin Hood and the pranks of Puck were disseminated through broadsheet not information ballads.

New ballads were written about current events like fires, the birth of monstrous animals, and so forth, giving particulars of names and places. Satirical ballads and Royalist ballads contributed to 17th century political discourse. In a sense, these ballads were antecedents of the modern newspaper.

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