BALLAD STANZA

a verse stanza common in English ballads that consists of two lines in ballad metre, usually printed as a four-line stanza with a rhyme scheme of abcb, as in The Wife of Usher's Well, which begins: There lived a wife at Usher's Well, And a wealthy wife was she; She had three stout and stalwart sons, And sent them o'er the sea. They hadna been a week from her, A week but barely ane, Whan word came to the carlin wife, That her three sons were gane.