Law-breaking, Punishment, and the City: Execution Ballads in the Urban Environment

This article explores how execution ballads - in English, French, Italian and German - evoked the urban spaces and locationsofpunishmentfrom the sixteenth through to the nineteenth century. It explores the rationalebehind judges' choices of specific locationswithin and outside the city wallsfor public dismemberment and executions. Civic spectators were extremely conscious of the symbolism of individual sites of punishment and of the emotional, religious and social significance of performing specific rituals in certain locations. Key spaces, both intra- and extramural, where penalties were administered to those who had broken the law accrued emotional significance over time, as punishments were repeatedly enacted there. The conservative message in ballads meant that they worked in conjunction with the deterrent purpose of public execution, and they often evoked the urbansettings within the lyrics to drive home the message offear and
shame thatpublicexecutionssoughtto broadcast.