Hearing the news that Julia Donaldson (writer of The Gruffalo and other hugely popular books for children) had been awarded a CBE in the 2018/19 New Year’s Honours list reminded me of the important place that rhyming tales (narrative poetry) have had in literature and society for perhaps thousands of years. The ballad-like Gruffalo is essentially a narrative poem; a story told in rhyme. The origins of narrative poems are lost in the mists of time, existing before books were printed and before people were even able to write anything down. Indeed poetical stories probably existed because they needed to be remembered and recited or sung. Rhymes, regular rhythms, or lines of words all beginning with the same sound (known as “alliterative” verse) make it easier to remember large numbers of words. In ancient Greece the bards told tales of heroic leaders and the Saxons had a similar tradition. Ancient poets worked for local rulers, telling stories that spoke of their patron’s amazing heroism, like a sort public relations organisation of the time. Consequently, the poets themselves were highly thought of in society.

One of the best known and oldest narrative poems in Northern European history is Beowulf, which is still readily available to read in many different versions and translations. Written in the Old English/Anglo-Saxon language in the 700s and known from a written copy that was made several hundred years later, it tells of the heroism of the Scandinavian Beowulf, his violent world and its mythical monsters. Since then there have been many poems written down and published in book form that tell stories, including Milton’s Paradise Lost (1670s), Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1790s) and Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot (1832). These last two are properly known as “lyrical ballads”, a particularly popular form of poetry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And more recently, many children’s picture books use longer rhymes as a way to tell stories in a form that is engaging and memorable for young audiences, Julia Donaldson’s books being wonderful examples.

I have written some long narrative verses myself, although my children were not impressed and found it all a bit boring, so I think I might keep those to myself….