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[lsanderson]

"The anonymity of these balladeers might account for the impersonal tone of their compositions. Ballads tend to center on the protagonist — usually named — and commonly lack an "I." The narrator is a transparency through which we view the story, not a human presence; the author has no individual voice. As a result, disastrous events are delivered deadpan. Trivial and calamitous pieces of news are conveyed in the same flat, unemotional tone, sometimes with unintentionally comic results:

Lord Thomas he had his sword by his side

As he walked about the hall.
He cut off his bride's head from her shoulders
And he threw it against the wall.

Now there's a bride's head you wouldn't want to revisit." 

The Ballad of the Ballad, Poetry's Bearer of Bad News By BILLY COLLINS  Article.