example, the _Satura Menippea_, imitated in Latin by Varro and
Petronius (Teuffel and Schwabe, _Hist. Roman Literature_, trans. Warr,
I. 255), and claimed for the half-rhythmical portion of Swift’s
_Battle of the Books_, by Feyerabend, _Englische Studien_, XI. 487 ff.
Some of Feyerabend’s scanning, by the way, is highly adventurous.
Footnote 178:
_Journal_, 12 Mai, 1857.
Footnote 179:
_De Arte Poet._, I. 75.
Footnote 180:
In Grimm’s charming article on “Poetry in Law,” and in Kögel’s
_Geschichte der deutschen Litt._ I.
Footnote 181:
_Zeitschrift f. deutsche Philologie_, XXIX. 405 ff.
Footnote 182:
See Norden’s _Anhang_ on Rime, II. 810 ff. It may be noted here that
the fact of which Norden makes so much, riming of inflectional
endings, was pointed out by Masing, _Ursprung des Reims_, Dorpat,
1866, pp. 15 f.
Footnote 183:
In a review of Bücher’s _Arbeit und Rhythmus_; see _Zeitschr. f.
vergl. Litteraturgesch._, N. F. II. (1897) 369 ff. This is another
darling heresy,—to break up the old tradition of evolution, and to
deny that dance, song, poetry, began as a single art. Yet ethnology,
as it will be seen, supports this tradition; so does a study of
popular poetry. Compare, too, _Iliad_, XVIII. 569 ff., and other
commonplaces, for the classic traditions, and Aristotle’s famous
passage on Origins, for older science in the case.
Footnote 184:
“Dass ... Musik aus dem Gefallen an selbst hervorgerufenen Lärm sich
entwickelt hat....”
Footnote 185:
“Essai de Rythmique Comparée,” in _Le Museon_, X. 299 ff., 419 ff.,
589 ff.
Footnote 186:
Used to explain the actual origin of rhythm by Müller and Schumann,
_Zeitschr. f. Psychol. u. Physiol. d. Sinnesorgane_, VI. 282 f.,
quoted by Meumann, _Untersuchungen_, etc., pp. 10 f.
Footnote 187:
See Hoffmann’s similar theory, quoted below.
Footnote 188:
The old mistake of confounding literal chronology with evolution. As
if the _Avesta_ were primitive!
Footnote 189:
So M. de la Grasserie asserts in an ingenious account of the
retrograde process by which in modern times poetry has retraced its
old evolution, passing from verse back through rhythmic prose to prose
outright. The only use which he now concedes to verse is in ... the
opera. In all other fields,—epic, drama, lyric,—he thinks it is dead
as King Pandion.
Footnote 190:
_Die Entstehung der arabischen Versmasse_, Giessen, 1896.
Footnote 191:
A remarkable passage. See the translation of Roberts, p. 149.
Footnote 192:
Evelyn’s _Diary_, 24 February, 1664-1665: “Dr. Fell, Canon of Christ
Church, preached before the king ... a very formal discourse, and in
blank verse, according to his manner.”
Footnote 193:
The whole passage is interesting with its fling at poetry, not,
however, to be taken as a serious indictment: _Table Talk_, ed. Arber,
p. 85: “’Tis a fine thing for children to learn to make verse; but
when they come to be men, they must speak like other men, or else they
will be laugh’t at. ’Tis ridiculous to speak, or write, or preach in
verse.” Again, “’Tis ridiculous for a Lord to print verses, ’tis well
enough to make them to please himself, but to make them publick is
foolish. If a man in his private chamber twirls his bandstrings, or
plays with a rush to please himself, ’tis well enough; but if he
should go into Fleet Street,”—and so on. He thinks there is no reason
why plays should be in verse; but he rescues the old poets who were
forced to write verse “because their verse was sung to music.”
Footnote 194:
_Untersuchungen zur Psychologic und Aesthetik des Rhythmus_, Leipzig,
1894; reprinted from Vol. X. of Wundt’s _Philosophische Studien_.
Footnote 195:
See p. 77, where he chooses “die Freiheit des declamirten Rhythmus
gegenüber dem allgemeinen rhythmischen Princip der Regelmässigkeit.”
See also pp. 82, 87, 101, and especially 91.
Footnote 196:
For example, classical rendering of verse, and even modern recitation,
as among the Italians. “La plupart des Italiens ont, en lisant les
vers, une sorte de chant monotone, appelé _cantilene_, qui détruit
toute émotion,” says Mme. de Staël, _Corinne_, Chap. III.; but the
“elocutionary” emotion is usually an impertinence in simple and
cadenced lyric.
Footnote 197:
Compare Lessing’s different but analogous antithesis in the _Laokoon_,
XI.: “Bei dem Artisten dünkt uns die Ausführung schwerer als die
Erfindung; bei dem Dichter, hingegen, ist es umgekehrt.”
Footnote 198:
See his article in Kuhn’s _Zeitschr. f. vergl. Sprach._, IX. 437 ff.;
and the second volume of his _Metrik der Griechen_. For the
four-accent verse as popular measure, see H. Usener, _Altgriechischer
Versbau_, Bonn, 1887, a suggestive book. For the same verse in
Russian, see Bistrom in the _Zeitsch. f. Völkerpsychol._, V. 185.
Footnote 199:
Wilmanns thinks the case for this “original” verse has not been made
out in any convincing way.
Footnote 200:
F. D. Allen, in Kuhn’s _Zeitsch. f. vergl. Sprach._, XXIV. 558 ff.,
showed that this Iranian syllable-counting verse, one of the oldest of
metres, is not merely counting, but a rhythmic affair, and that the
rhythm lay in successive equal intervals marked by verse accent.
Footnote 201:
_Zur althochdeutchen Alliterationspoesie_, 1888, pp. 109 ff.,
particularly 146 ff., “über den Takt.”
Footnote 202:
_Beiträge zur Geschichte der älteren deutschen Litteratur_, III., “Der
altdeutsche Reimvers,” Bonn, 1887, pp. 141 f.
Footnote 203:
Sievers, _Altgermanische Metrik_, 1893, pp. 172 ff.
Footnote 204:
That strophic hymns were known in earliest Germanic poetry is shown,
Sievers points out, by the fact that Middle High German _liet_ is the
same as Old Norse _ljóð_, “strophe.” For the old choral poetry, he
says, “wird ein im gleichen Takte fortschreitender Sangesvortrag ohne
weiteres zuzugeben sein,” _Ibid._, p. 20.
Footnote 205:
Above, p. 8, and Grosse, _Anfänge_, p. 233.
Footnote 206:
See above, p. 8, note.
Footnote 207:
Other motions than that of the communal dance may induce rhythm. The
movement of labour will be considered in detail; but it may be noted
here that swinging, a solitary performance, tempts the savage of
Borneo to sing a monotonous song and ask the spirits for a good crop
(Bruchmann, _Poetik_, p. 18).
Footnote 208:
See “The Origin and Function of Music,” _Essays_, 1857; “The Origin of
Music,” in _Mind_, XV. (1890) 449 ff.; and a note on certain
criticisms of this article, _Mind_, XVI. 535 ff.
Footnote 209:
_The Power of Sound_, London, 1880, pp. 476 ff.
Footnote 210:
This is the basis of Wallaschek’s convincing argument against Mr.
Spencer’s theory: _Primitive Music_, London, 1893, pp. 251 ff.
Footnote 211:
_Anfänge der Kunst_, p. 206, note.
Footnote 212:
Wallaschek, _Primitive Music_, p. 11.
Footnote 213:
See the positive statement of Dr. Jacobsthal, quoted above, p. 69.
Footnote 214:
Work quoted, pp. 31, 42, 68, 180 f. 184, 186, 252. The evidence
collected in this interesting book is so varied, so extensive, and so
impartially set forth, that the conclusions drawn by Wallaschek ought
to be convincing.
Footnote 215:
Gustaf von Düben, _Om Lappland och Lapparne_, ... Stockholm, 1873
(colophon), p. 319.
Footnote 216:
As impossible, says one authority, quoted by Wallaschek, _Primitive
Music_, p. 187, “as to separate the colour from the skin.”
Footnote 217:
_Ibid._, p. 186.
Footnote 218:
It is the neglect of choral conditions and communal consent which
takes away the value for general purposes from Dr. Otto Hoffman’s
otherwise praiseworthy study of the _Reimformeln im Westgermanischen_
(Leipzig, 1886, pp. 9 ff.). Man, he says, naturally speaks in
breath-lengths, in periods which tend to be of equal duration.
“Whoever could give to these periods, with their tendency to equal
quantities, the most symmetrical and equal portions of actual speech,
passed for an artist.” To this symmetry in duration was added
similarity of sound; so came the short riming phrases, as well as the
verse-lengths themselves. But poetry did not wait until clever artists
furbished up into verse-lengths and attractive harmonies these
breath-lengths of a spoken sentence. Language itself, as one will
presently see, had more a festal than an individual origin; and long
before the artist was practising his breath-lengths for a connected
story, the rhythm of verse was fixed by the muscular rhythm of steps
in a communal dance accompanied by words, often by one sound, repeated
indefinitely, but in exact cadence with the steps.
Footnote 219:
Dr. Paul Ehrenrcich, “über die Botocuden,” in the _Zeitschr. f.
Ethnologie_, XIX. 30 ff.
Footnote 220:
The gnomic verses preserved in Anglo-Saxon, especially the shorter
sentences in the Exeter Ms. (see Grein-Wülker, _Biblioth._, I. 345 f.)
are a curious instance of the survival of _quasi_-Botocudan maxims on
a higher plane of culture. As to the æsthetic value of the South
American utterance, how far is it inferior to the sonorous
commonplaces of our own verse,—say _The Psalm of Life_?
Footnote 221:
“The Central Eskimo,” by Dr. F. Boas, _Sixth Annual Report, Bureau of
Ethnology_, 1884-1885, Washington, 1888, pp. 409 ff.
Footnote 222:
_Atlantic Monthly_, XIX. (1867), 685 ff.
Footnote 223:
See below, on Cumulative Songs.
Footnote 224:
See the marching song, p. 690, _Go in the Wilderness_. Thanks to the
repetitions, it “scans” correctly enough, even when it is read.
Footnote 225:
Meumann’s remarks on this subject are good, though they apply no
further than the narrow circle of his experiments. See
_Untersuchungen_, pp. 26, 35, 77. Grant Allen, _Physiological
Æsthetics_, London, 1887, pp. 114 f., 118, is quite wide of the mark;
facts of physiology, in this case, need very careful testing by the
facts of poetry.
Footnote 226:
_Mind_, N. S., IV. (1895), 28 ff., “On the Difference of Time and
Rhythm in Music,” supplementing researches in his _Primitive Music_.
Footnote 227:
_Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 104.
Footnote 228:
See his _Primitive Music_, pp. 239, 236, note; and Grosse, _Anfänge_,
p. 213.
Footnote 229:
The theory of breath-lengths, often noted, comes here into play. Under
high excitement breathing grows abnormally loud, and the recurring
pauses are regular. Play-excitement, festal shouting and leaping,
would of course bring this about; but the individual must be studied.
Strongly accented verses result from such a process, as any one can
see who undertakes to recite poetry during violent but regular
exercise,—say, in swinging Indian clubs. Here, too, one learns how
rhythm preceded pitch and quantity; the jerked-out accents leave
little room for measuring either height or length of tones. But the
throng and its consent brought out this rhythm, not oratory; and one
must keep in mind the remark of Hamann, after his famous phrase about
poetry as the mother-tongue of man, “wie Gesang älter als
Declamation.”
Footnote 230:
The ethnological evidence for this statement is given in Wallaschek’s
_Primitive Music_ on nearly every page. Many good things on the origin
of rhythm could be quoted from older writers. A. W. Schlegel undertook
a physiological and genetic study of rhythm, but, at Schiller’s
prompting, offered more attractive metal to the Kantlings with “das
Beharrliche im Wechsel.” One notes, however, the modern tone of
passages in the Berlin Lectures; _e.g._ I. 242 ff. Now and then he
almost anticipates Bücher’s _Arbeit und Rhythmus_. Sulzer’s article in
the _Allgemeine Theorie_ is very interesting. For early material, see
Blankenburg’s invaluable _Litterarische Zusätze_, 3 vols., 1796-1798.
A good recent discussion is found in the third book of Guyau’s
_Problèmes_.
Footnote 231:
Unless it is a succession of inarticulate sounds. See Groos, _Spiele
der Menschen_, Jena, 1899, p. 42.
Footnote 232:
Compare the “meaningless” words so common in savage poetry. The art of
combining with exact rhythm a series of syntactic sentences which give
a connected story, or express a logical series of thoughts, is no
primitive process. Earliest poetry is repetition of sounds,—not
meaningless, for they were connected with the occasion,—of words, of
sentences, with a diminishing use of the refrain, a diminishing
frequency of repetition.
Footnote 233:
In his “Art of the Future,” _Gesammelte Schriften_, III. 82 ff., he
tells how dance, song, and poem were at first inseparable. Dance has
as artistic material “the whole man from top to toe”; but it becomes
an art only through rhythm, which is also the very skeleton of music:
“without rhythm no dance, no song.” Rhythm is “the soul of dancing and
the brain of music.” With the human voice comes poetry, all three
being woven in one: out of this union of the three “is born the single
art of lyric,” but they get their highest expression in the drama.
Footnote 234:
_Primitive Music_, pp. 174, 187.
Footnote 235:
_Psychology of the Emotions_, pp. 335 f.
Footnote 236:
In an article so entitled, in _Mind_, XVI. (1891), 498 ff., and N. S.,
I. (1892), 325 ff.
Footnote 237:
The tendency to use hands as well as feet in keeping rhythm is
illustrated by the Ba-Ronga of Delagoa Bay (Junod, _Les Chantes et les
Contes des Ba-Ronga_, Lausanne, 1897), where the use of sticks may
help to explain Donovan’s “rhythmic beating.” With these people “tout
s’y chante et ... tous ou presque tous les chants s’y dansent” (p.
21). Refrains are sung “ten, twenty, fifty times in succession”; the
songs have two elements, the solo and the refrain _en tutti_. A circle
is formed, the men holding sticks in their hands; the solo singer
leaps into the middle and sings a few words; then all the dancers sing
a refrain, raising and dropping their sticks in cadence, though the
rhythm is primarily given by their stamping feet. Then the soloist
again, only slightly varying his theme; and again the long refrain
(pp. 32 f.). The war-songs are almost entirely refrain, sung by all
the warriors as they dance, “antique et grandiose choral,” says Junod.
Footnote 238:
_From Lyre to Muse, a History of the Aboriginal Union of Music and
Poetry_, London, 1890; Chap. V., “Fusion of Tones and Words.”
Footnote 239:
“It is said that if it is known that anybody in particular composed a
song, the people in some of these places will not sing it,” _Ibid._,
pp. 138 f. For this vexed question, see below, chapter on Communal
Poetry.
Footnote 240:
Of course Horace (IV. ii. 10 ff.) is thinking of Pindar’s “new”
compounds and fresh expressions; but the quotation agrees as well with
the history of the dithyrambic poem.
Footnote 241:
“Arbeit und Rhythmus,” reprinted from the _Abhandlungen d. kgl.
sächsischen Gesellschaft d. Wissenschaften, philol. histor. Classe_,
XVII. 5, Leipzig, 1896. According to Groos, _Spiele der Menschen_, pp.
57 ff., some of these statements have been modified. In the second
edition of the _Entstehung der Volkswirthschaft_, pp. 32 f., a book
which the present writer could not consult, Bücher concedes the
priority of play, and sees in it the starting-point of labour. This,
however, does not change the validity of Bücher’s main argument for
the connection of labour and rhythm, so far as they concern the
beginnings of poetry.
Footnote 242:
A. W. Schlegel here and there hints at this origin of rhythm in
labour; so does Sulzer. See note above, p. 101. See also the Abbé
Batteux, “Sur les Nombres Poëtiques et Oratoires,” _Mém. Acad.
Inscript._, XXXV. 415: “le marteau du forgeron tombe en cadence, la
faulx du moissonneur va et revient avec nombre ... le rhythme soutient
nos forces dans les travaux pénibles.”
Footnote 243:
Bücher, p. 101.
Footnote 244:
_Ibid._, p. 52.
Footnote 245:
“Grundelement dieser Dreieinheit,” _Ibid._, p. 78. Of course, he
admits elsewhere similar functions of the dance, which was, after all,
a kind of labour, even when not an imitation of labour. Hence Bücher
gives priority to labour in its large sense. For primitive man the
line between work and play was not too sharply drawn.
Footnote 246:
A strong support for this social foundation of song is found in
observations such as Böckel has made among the peasants of Hesse.
“Their song,” he says (work quoted, p. cv.), “is nearly all choral;
the countryman, when sober, seldom sings alone. It is remarkable,”
Böckel goes on to say, “how these people, who singly show little
capacity for music, can make such an artistic effect in chorus.”
Footnote 247:
Several men, as a rule, trod the grapes with naked feet. Songs
directly sprung from this labour survived for long ages. The material
is indicated by Bücher, pp. 88 f. The later festal songs, of course,
were symbolical and reminiscent.
Footnote 248:
The famous Greek song, preserved by Plutarch, is matched by recent
songs of the Africans, as well as by those of European traditions.
Footnote 249:
“La sympathie pour les choses,” says M. de Vogüé, _Histoire et
Poésie_, p. 190, is the “principe et raison de l’art d’écrire.”
Footnote 250:
Bastian, in his book _Der Völkergedanke im Aufbau einer Wissenschaft
vom Menschen_, Berlin, 1881, pp. 8 f., notes that in a modern work of
art one looks for traits of the genius that brought it forth, while in
the beginnings of society, of institutions, one looks “for the
unconscious stirrings, in the organism, of the average man who has
realized himself in them.” And in an address (same book, p. 172) on
the aims of ethnology, he declares that for this science man is not
the individual _anthropos_, but the social being, the _zoon politikon_
of Aristotle, which demands the social state as condition of his
existence. “_Das Primäre ist also der Völkergedanke._”
Footnote 251:
_Œuvres_, Paris, 1790, III. 165 ff., from the _Mercure_ of January,
1678.
Footnote 252:
Nowhere better discussed and settled than in Goethe’s sonnet, “_Natur
und Kunst, sie scheinen sich zu fliehen_,” with its concluding lines:—
In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister,
Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben.
Footnote 253:
_Theatrum Poetarum_, first published 1675, ed. Brydges, Canterbury,
1800 (who limits it to English poets, so changing the title), p.
xxxvi.
Footnote 254:
_Ueber Ursprung und Verbreitung des Reimes_, Dorpat, 1866, p. 18.
“Anschauung” and “Empfindung” are the terms.
Footnote 255:
_Nature and Elements of Poetry_, pp. 76 f.
Footnote 256:
_Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen_, Bd. III., three essays, “Die
Kunst und die Revolution” (1849); “Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft,” a more
important work, dithyrambic, but highly interesting and full of the
“folk,” as against “Ihr Intelligenten”; and thirdly, “Kunst und Klima”
(1850).
Footnote 257:
_Ibid._, pp. 255 f., 261, 268.
Footnote 258:
See especially _ibid._, pp. 133-207.
Footnote 259:
Preface to _Cromwell_, p. 16: “La société, en effet, commence par
chanter ce qu’elle rêve, puis raconte ce qu’elle fait, et enfin se met
à peindre ce qu’elle pense,” Hugo’s well-known sequence of lyric,
epic, drama.
Footnote 260:
_L’Art au Point de Vue Sociologique_, p. 26.
Footnote 261:
This doctrine is in line with modern psychological notions of the part
played by intelligent mental selection upon the instinctive material
of consciousness. See Lloyd Morgan, _Habit and Instinct_, pp. 323 f.
Footnote 262:
See _Shepheard’s Calender_, October, Argument,—a specimen of the
doctrine in that never-published _English Poete_.
Footnote 263:
“Abbregé de l’Art Poetique,” in _Works_, ed. Blanchemain, VII. 318.
Footnote 264:
_Ibid._, VII. 340. “Aussi les divines fureurs de Musique, de Poësie,
et de paincture, ne viennent pas par degrés en perfection _comme les
autres sciences_, mais par boutées et comme esclairs de feu, qui deçu
qui dela apparoissent en divers pays, puis tout en un coup
s’esvanouissent.”
Footnote 265:
For writers in the vulgar tongue, Dante reverses the rule of more
matter and less art. They are too facile. “Pudeat ergo, pudeat idiotas
tantum audere deinceps, ut ad cantiones prorumpant,” _de vulgar.
Eloq._, Cap. vi. The _canzone_ must not be content with the speech of
common life; let it essay an exalted style.
Footnote 266:
Cap. iv., _Pastoralia_, p. 6.
Footnote 267:
G. J. Vossius, _de artis poeticæ natura_, 1647, Cap. iii. Many
subsequent writers followed Scaliger’s account of origins.
Footnote 268:
_Critische Dichtkunst_, 1737, pp. 86, 72.
Footnote 269:
_Unterricht von der teutschen Sprache und Poesie, deren Ursprung,
Fortgang und Lehrsätzen_, Kiel, 1682. This book has been called the
first attempt at a history of German, and, indeed, of collective
European, poetry. Morhof gives a historic account of rime, compares
German verse with verse of other nations, and is the first writer in
Germany to name Shakspere.
Footnote 270:
“De la Poésie Naturelle ou de la Langue Poétique” and “De la Poésie
Artificielle,” in _Mém. Acad. Inscript._, XV. 192 ff., 207 ff. (1739).
The only interest lies in the titles, the text is all verbal
quibbling. In _Mém._, XXIII. 85 ff., is a plan for a general history
of poetry. But Racine Junior is negligible.
Footnote 271:
_Ibid._, IX. 320 f. (1731-1733), in a paper on the songs of ancient
Greece. He repeats the idea that art comes out of nature, but lays
stress on a development of special singers, a sort of guild, as
contrasted with earlier universality of song. This is the contrast
made afterward by Wilhelm Grimm (_Heldensage_, 2d ed., pp. 382 f.)
between “free” and professional song.
Footnote 272:
_Augustini Calmet dissertatio de poesi veterum Hebraeorum_, ...
Helmstadii, 1723. A French version is in the _Dissertationes qui
peuvent servir de Prologomenes de l’Ecriture Sainte_, ... Paris, 1720,
3 vols., I. 128 ff. See particularly 15 ff. of the Latin: “Duo
habentur Poeseos genera: naturale et artificiale,” etc.
Footnote 273:
“Non incommode ergo dicimus, Poesin methodicam artem esse, accurate et
studiose exprimendi passiones, naturalem vero, quae sine arte, sine
meditatione praevia, eas sistit. Omnis populus, omnis terra, omne
temperamentum, omnis affectus sua non destituitur rhetorica aut poesi
naturali.... _Natura semper producit rudius aliquid, quod ars
perficere conatur._”
Footnote 274:
See Barth, _Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie_, Leipzig,
1897, I. 202.
Footnote 275:
“Sur les progrès successifs de l’esprit humain,” _Œuvres_, II. 597 ff.
Footnote 276:
On this change in poetic criticism, see Von Stein, _Entstehung der
neueren Aesthetik_, p. 97. It must be remembered, however, that while
Turgot clung to the individual in this sense, his search for laws of
progress, movements, tendencies, was really preparing ruin for
individualism, and making Condorcet’s and Herder’s task more easy.
Footnote 277:
_Characteristics_, 5th ed., Birmingham, 1765, I. 22.
Footnote 278:
_Stimmen der Völker_, Dedication: _Euch weih’ ich die Stimme des Volks
der zerstreueten Menschheit._
Footnote 279:
Leslie Stephen, _History of English Thought in the Eighteenth
Century_, II. Chap. XII. § vii., divides the general course of thought
into sentimental, romantic, and rationalistic tendencies.
Footnote 280:
_Essais_, I. liv., near the end: “La poësie populere et purement
naturelle a des naifvetez et graces par où elle se compare à la
principale beauté de la poësie parfaicte selon l’art: comme il se voit
ès villanelles de Gascoigne, et aus Chançons qu’on nous raporte des
nations qui n’ont conoissance d’aucun sciance ny mesmes d’escriture.
La poësie mediocre qui s’arrete entre deus est desdeignée, sans honur
et sans pris.”
Footnote 281:
On Cannibals, I. xxx. “Ce premier couplet, c’est le refrain de la
chanson.... Toute la journée se passe à dancer.”
Footnote 282:
Fresenius, _Deutsche Litteraturzeitung_, 1892, col. 769 ff.
Footnote 283:
Or whoever wrote the book. See Arber’s ed., pp. 26, 53.
Footnote 284:
So says Ferdinand Wolf in his famous essay on Spanish ballads.
Footnote 285:
_Stimmen der Völker_ and _Volkslieder_. _Volkslied_ is original with
Herder. See note, p. xxvi., of the author’s _Old English Ballads_.
Footnote 286:
“Nicht jeder versteht Poesie zu wittern,” is a remark of his still in
some need of emphasis, _Lectures_ (_Neudruck_), III. 141.
Footnote 287:
“We shall treat first the poetry of nature, and then the poetry of
art. We shall follow this development historically.”... _Lectures_
(_Neudruck_, etc.), I. 25 f.
Footnote 288:
_Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues_, a part of the
introduction to his researches on the Kawi language, § 20, _Werke_,
VI. 249.
Footnote 289:
See the introduction to the author’s _Old English Ballads_.
Footnote 290:
A. W. Schlegel, _Werke_, ed. Böcking, VIII. 64 ff., written in 1800.
See particularly pp. 79 f.
Footnote 291:
“Deren Dichter gewissermassen das Volk im ganzen war.”
Footnote 292:
Reprinted, _Werke_, XII. 383 ff., from the _Heidelberger Jahrbücher_
of 1815.
Footnote 293:
Oral and communal literature, it is almost superfluous to point out,
are not one and the same thing. See Max Müller on “Literature before
Letters,” _Nineteenth Century_, November, 1899, pp. 798 f.
Footnote 294:
Such an assumption takes most of the value from Berger’s detailed
account of the controversy over popular song, “Volksdichtung und
Kunstdichtung,” _Nord and Süd_, LXVIII. (1894), 76 ff., an account
which is often inaccurate and quite incomplete. Berger’s conclusion
that there is no essential difference between poetry of the people and
poetry of art confuses, as is usual in this school of Germans, the
poetic impulse with the poetic product.
Footnote 295:
As direct, unqualified fact. One is dealing here with no phrases, no
illustrations, such as the editor of Brantôme employs when he says
(preface to the _Vie des Dames Galantes_, p. x), “dans un siècle, il y
a deux choses, l’histoire et la comédie: l’histoire, c’est le peuple,
la comédie, c’est l’homme.”
Footnote 296:
_La Vie Littéraire_, II. 173.
Footnote 297:
Work quoted, p. 340.
Footnote 298:
For the psychological study of individuality in art and letters,
see Dilthey, “Beiträge zum Studium der Individualität,”
_Sitzungsberichte_, Berlin Academy, 1896, I. 295 ff. For a
historical study, with sociological leanings, see the admirable
work of Burckhardt, _Cultur der Renaissance in Italien_, ed. 1898,
I. 143 ff. (“der Mensch wird geistiges Individuum”), 154 f., 178;
II. 29 f., 48; and Brunetière, _Évolution des Genres_, pp. 39, 167
(Rousseau and individualism), and _Nouveaux Essais_, pp. 66, 150,
194.
Footnote 299:
If one had the materials, a similar emancipation of the poet could be
noted in Latin, beginning, perhaps, with Ennius—_volito vivus per ora
virum_—and Naevius, down to Horace, his fountain made famous _me
dicente_, and the _non omnis moriar_.
Footnote 300:
Vossler, _Poetische Theorien in der italienischen Frührenaissance_,
Berlin, 1900, p. 3: “Im Mittelalter hatte jede Gesellschaftsklasse
ihren eigenen zünftigen Sänger (_rimatore_ oder _dicitore per rima_),
der nur von ihr verstanden und anerkannt wurde.”
Footnote 301:
Lounsbury, _Chaucer_, III. 14.
Footnote 302:
Nyrop, _Den oldfranske Heltedigtning_, p. 288.
Footnote 303:
On the individual poet as mouthpiece of the clan, see Posnett, _Comp.
Lit._, pp. 130 ff., and Letourneau, _Évolution Littéraire_, p. 78.
Footnote 304:
_Purgat._, xxiv. 52 ff.:—
Io mi son un che quando
Amor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modo
Che ditta dentro, vo significando.
But it must be read with what precedes and what follows.
Footnote 305:
It is almost impertinent to remind the reader of Dante’s famous
verses, _Purgat._, viii. 1 ff. Perhaps Hugo remembers his Dante here.
Compare Section iv. of this same _Chant_.
Footnote 306:
The emancipation of woman as an individual begins here in Italy. See
M. de Vogüé’s study of the Sforza (in _Histoire et Poésie_), and the
general statement of Burckhardt, _Cult. Ital. Ren._, I. 144, note 3.
Footnote 307:
“Ego velut in confinio duorum populorum constitutus simul ante
retroque prospicio,” a saying of Petrarch, would apply better to
Dante. The _Vita Nuova_ has psychological analysis enough for ten
moderns; but the mediæval in it all conquers the modern, as one feels
the moment one turns to Petrarch’s correspondence. Perhaps Norden,
_Antike Kunstprosa_, II. 732, lays too much stress on Petrarch’s
backward gaze; he did look backward to the classics, but he was not
mediæval. See the charming extracts given in Robinson and Rolfe’s
_Petrarca_.
Footnote 308:
Hardly borrowed from the classics, as Gautier hints in general, and
asserts for Old French epic. See Benezé, _Das Traummotiv in der mhd.
Dichtung bis 1250, und in alten deutschen Volksliedern_, Halle, 1897,
pp. 53 ff.
Footnote 309:
_Development of English Thought_, pp. 81 f.
Footnote 310:
Déor’s song, first in point of time of English lyrics, is a _vox
clamantis in deserto_. The breezy personality of it, the individual
confidence, the appeal to great names and great things to prop Master
Déor’s own hope that something good will turn up,—all this is
discouragement to the critic who likes to go about pasting labels on
various epochs of literature. But there is Déor’s rival, Wîdsîð, the
typical singer lost in the guild, or rather a dozen singers rolled
into one,—communal triumph.
Footnote 311:
_Causeries du Lundi_, XIV. 296 f. Learned research on the _ubi sunt_
formula is noted by Professor Bright, _Modern Language Notes_, 1893,
Col. 187.
Footnote 312:
Classical parallels go for little here; changes rung upon the _memento
mori_, like Horace’s _quo pater Æneas_, a statement, are not in line
with these mediæval queries.
Footnote 313:
Chaucer, _Troilus_, V. 1174 ff.:—
From hazel-wode, ther Ioly Robin pleyde,
Shal come al that that thou abydest here;
Ye, farewel al the snow of ferne yere!
Boccaccio has instead an allusion to the “wind of Etna.” Chaucer’s
phrase is “a reference to some popular song or saying,” in Skeat’s
opinion.
Footnote 314:
Printed by Morris, _Old English Miscellany_, pp. 90 ff.
Footnote 315:
Not, of course, merely in this ballade. Among other examples of the
quality, see stanzas 28, 29, 38 ff. of the _Grand Testament_. See
other ballades; passages in the _Petit Testament_:—
“Au fort, je meurs amant martir,”
and of course the _Regrets de la Belle Heaulmiere_.
Footnote 316:
About 1300; modernized, of course. Compare the sweep and firm
individual control of Wordsworth’s _Loud is the Vale_,—lines on the
expected death of Fox.
Footnote 317:
M. Gaston Paris, _Poésie du Moyen Age_, II. 232, contrasts Villon with
Charles of Orleans, the “dernier chanteur du moyen age,” while the
other is “premier poète moderne,” and that “par le libre essor de
l’individualisme.” See the rest of this admirable summary.
Footnote 318:
The Lorelei legend would once have been given for its own sake; now it
is merely a reason, which the poet imparts to his reader, “dass ich so
traurig bin.”
Footnote 319:
_Lament for the Makaris_ (dead poets for dead ladies), _quhen he wes
Seik_,—a significant situation, like Tom Nash—again with dead lords
and ladies—and his “I am sick, I must die: Lord have mercy on us!” For
the imitation of Villon by Dunbar, see the notes by Dr. Gregor in
Small’s edition of Dunbar’s _Works_.
Footnote 320:
Mr. Sidney Lee has surely gone too far in divorcing sentiment from
Elizabethan sonnets; as in the case of dance and ballad, literary
bookkeeping can be overdone, and borrowing may too easily obscure
production.
Footnote 321:
See Ribot, _Psychol. Emot._, p. 267, on arrested development of
emotion. He allows, by the way, p. vi., not only a physiological basis
of emotion, but, pp. 7, 12, gives autonomy to the emotional states,
and allows them to exist independently of intellectual conditions.
Footnote 322:
The tyranny of terms mars some of the conclusions in Professor
Francke’s valuable book on _Social Forces in German Literature_, and
the “individualism” to which he often refers has divers meanings.
Footnote 323:
See next chapter.
Footnote 324:
Becker, _Ursprung der romanischen Versmasse_, Strassburg, 1890, pp. 6
f., notes that a mediæval hymn by no means expressed mediæval life; it
was an individual affair, as was proved at length by Wolf, _Lais_, pp.
86 ff., who calls the hymns “kunstmässige Gedichte (_carmina_)” by
known and named churchmen. These often had classical models in mind.
Later the hymns were suited to congregational purposes.
Footnote 325:
See p. 172; and cf. the passage about the solitary way of the poet, p.
175: “Les animaux lâches vont en troupes. Le lion marche seul dans le
désert. Qu’ainsi marche toujours le poëte.”
Footnote 326:
Gervinus thinks that the individual came to his rights in the
crusades, when Christian ideals were substituted for ancient ideals.
But the classical traditions of authorship, if not of wider issues,
were one with the individual spirit of Christianity. The struggle was
against communal conditions of life in general.
Footnote 327:
“To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow....”
Footnote 328:
A pretty study in communal feeling, as compared with artistic and
individual sentiment, could treat the use of a supernatural element in
the ballad _Clerk Saunders_ and in Keats’s _La Belle Dame sans Merci_.
Footnote 329:
See Texte, _Rousseau_, pp. 330 ff.
Footnote 330:
_Cult. Ren. in Ital._, II. 72.
Footnote 331:
Even Icelandic sagas, which show considerable artistic skill, make the
diction of their heroes anything but pathetic, whatever the situation.
See Heinzel, “Beschreibung d. isländ. Saga,” _Sitzungsberichte Wiener
Akad._, XCVII. 119.
Footnote 332:
Work quoted, I. 167.
Footnote 333:
Northall, _English Folk-Rhymes_, prints a number of these; for
example, p. 34, in Lancashire, Gorton lads sing:—
The Abbey Hey bulldogs drest i’ rags,
Dar’ no com’ out to the Gorton lads.
One thinks, too, of the Scottish feuds, and a favourite tune like that
of Liddesdale:—
O wha dare meddle wi’ me?
O wha dare meddle wi’ me?
My name it is little Jock Elliot,
And wha dare meddle wi’ me?
See Chambers’s _Book of Days_, I. 200.
Footnote 334:
Vilmar, in his little _Handbüchlein_, p. 5, is full of righteous
enthusiasm for an old cutthroat ballad, and full of righteous scorn
for Heine’s cynical lines, “Spitzbübin war sie, er war ein Dieb;” the
modern reader, for his sins, prefers Heine and chances the moral
turpitude involved in his choice.
Footnote 335:
Interest even in the great tragedies has come to be duty rather than
inclination. In the Abbé Dubos’s day tragedy was still preferred; but
he says that whereas he read Racine with keenest delight at thirty
(“lorsqu’il etoit occupé des passions que ces pièces nous
dépeignent”), at sixty it was Molière.
Footnote 336:
_Der Scheidende._ Sentiment naturally turns to the cadence of rhythm,
while humour feels at home in prose; hence it is easy to see that
humour in verse, as with Heine, is ancillary to sentiment, while
sentiment in prose, as with Sterne and even Lamb, is ancillary to
humour.
Footnote 337:
See below, Chap. VII.
Footnote 338:
See the author’s _Old English Ballads_, p. xxx, and reference to
Wordsworth’s famous preface. See also Gray’s letter to R. West, April,
1742, “The language of the age is never the language of poetry,” and
what follows.
Footnote 339:
See the author’s _Old English Ballads_, Boston, 1894, Introduction (on
terminology, origins, criticism), and Appendix I. (_The Ballads of
Europe_). For collections, see, of course, the material in the tenth
volume of Child’s great work. On the relations of this communal ballad
to the other kind of ballads, see Holtzhausen, _Ballade und Romanze_,
Halle, 1882, and Chevalier, _Zur Poetik der Ballade_, Programme of the
Prague _Obergymnasium_, in four parts, Prague, 1891-1895.
Footnote 340:
“Volkslied und Kunstlied in Deutschland,” Beilage zur _Allgemeinen
Zeitung_, Munich, Nos. 53, 54, March, 1898,—a paper first read in
October, 1897.
Footnote 341:
Only the narrative song is here considered; for popular lyric see
below.
Footnote 342:
“Volksdichtung und Kunstdichtung,” in _Nord und Süd_, LXVIII. (1894),
76 ff. It may be noted here that the temptation to take this easy
attitude toward poetry of the people, as toward a fictitious and
fanciful affair, is largely due to a misunderstanding of the
evolutionary side of the case. The distinction is not one of
coexistent forms of poetry so much as of successive stages of
evolution. It is no hard matter to take so-called popular poetry of
the day and reduce it to terms of art—the lowest terms, of course; but
with poetry of the people treated as a closed or closing account, and
with historical evidence about it in former times, a very different
problem is presented. An important hint to this effect was given by
Dr. Eugen Wolff in his paper “über den Stil des Nibelungenliedes,”
_Verhandlungen der vierzigsten Versammlung deutscher Philologen_,
etc., Leipzig, 1890, pp. 259 ff.
Footnote 343:
_Norske Folkeviser_, Christiania, 1853, pp. iii f.
Footnote 344:
_Chants et Chansons Populaires des Provinces de l’Ouest_, Niort, 1895,
I. 12. For the authorship, Le Braz, remarks, _Soniou-Breiz-Izel,
Chansons Pop. d. l. Basse-Bretagne_, Introd., p. xxv, “à mesure que
les productions populaires deviennent plus médiocres, leurs auteurs se
font un devoir de conscience de les contresigner.”
Footnote 345:
_Songs of the Russian People_, p. 40.
Footnote 346:
Krohn, “La Chanson Populaire en Finlande,” Proceedings Internat.
Folk-Lore Congress, 1891, pp. 134 ff., a valuable paper. “La poésie
s’est refugiée dans la pensée, mais elle n’a pu se maintenir intacte
de trivialité.” See also Comparetti, _Kalewala_, pp. 16 f.
Footnote 347:
E. H. Meyer, _Volkskunde_, pp. 327, 331.
Footnote 348:
_James Hogg_ (Famous Scots Series), p. 25.
Footnote 349:
In _Mélusine_, IV, (1888-1889), pp. 49 ff., and continued.
Footnote 350:
It is significant that the vogue of singing-clubs in German rural
districts, which would seem to make for communal ballads, really
drives them out. See Dunger, _Rundâs u. Reimsprüche aus dem
Vogtlande_, Plauen, 1876, p. xxx.
Footnote 351:
The introduction to Rosa Warrens’s _Schwedische Volkslieder_, 1857, is
by Wolf, and Grundtvig did a similar favour for her _Dänische
Volkslieder_, 1858; opposed as regards authorship, the two are agreed
on the source of a ballad in the homogeneous community. This even
Comparetti recognizes: _Kalewala_, p. 21. See, too, Liliencron,
_Deutsches Leben im Volkslied um 1530_, p. xi., and Baring-Gould,
_English Minstrelsie_, Vol. VII. Introduction (“On English
Song-Making”). But it is useless to pile up these references.
Footnote 352:
January 27, 1900.
Footnote 353:
Of course, one community may still sing, while another has forgotten.
Beaurepaire, _Étude sur la Poésie Populaire en Normandie_, 1856, pp.
24 f., notes this, as well as the fact that some kinds of songs linger
while others die. He found no _vocero_ left in Normandy, but old
choral wedding songs still were heard. The dance is going—the old
village dance, the _ronde_: pp. 30 f.
Footnote 354:
Böckel, _Deutsche Volkslieder aus Oberhessen_, Marburg, 1885, has an
introduction of great value, which shows how utterly German folksong
is a closed account. Traditional ballads are still sung, but none are
made; what is now made is mainly “Schmutz und Rohheit.” Factories,
singing-schools, are putting an end to communal song. The process of
decay, he thinks, began as early as 1600. For description of modern
communal songs, see p. cxxviii. Folksong, he says (p. clxxxiii), is
dead throughout civilized Europe.
Footnote 355:
See John Ashton, _Modern Street Ballads_, London, 1888. For the
French, see C. Nisard, _Les Chansons Populaires chez les Anciens et
chez les Français, essai historique suivi d’une étude sur la chanson
des rues contemporaine_, ... Paris, 1867, 2 vols. Vol. II. treats
street songs. This is really a continuation of Nisard’s _Histoire des
Livres Populaires_, 2 vols., 1854, on almanacs, prophecies,
divinations, magic, etc. Nisard’s account of origins is ridiculous,—or
perhaps it is meant to be playful. See I. 69.
Footnote 356:
In addition to the material quoted in the introduction to _Old English
Ballads_, see Nash, Harvey, and the other pamphleteers on nearly every
page. Chettle, _Kind-Harts Dreame_ (Percy Soc., 1841), particularly
pp. 9 ff., has a lively account of ballad making, printing, selling,
singing, in this lower stratum. What is so lewd, he asks, that it has
not been printed “and in every streete abusively chanted”? For the
state of things somewhat later, see a curious publication, _Whimzies,
or a New Cast of Characters_, London, 1631; it describes in
alphabetical order, “almanach-maker,” “ballad-monger,” and so on, down
to “zealous brother”; for ballad-monger, see pp. 8-15.
Footnote 357:
_Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs._
Footnote 358:
_National Ballad and Song: Merry Songs and Ballads Prior to the Year
1800_; 5 vols., privately printed for subscribers only, 1897. The
fourth volume of the Percy Folio teaches a like lesson.
Footnote 359:
_Werke_, ed. Suphan, XXV. 323.
Footnote 360:
See above, p. 121.
Footnote 361:
_Poetik_ (well called _Naturlehre der Dichtung_, and an excellent
piece of work), pp. 99 ff.
Footnote 362:
When folk read and write, they cease to improvise poetry, and the
folksong really ceases; that the æsthetic impulse, however, abides
with them, even in low levels, but has other results, is shown by
Gustav Meyer in an interesting passage of his “Neugriechische
Volkslieder,” _Essays_, p. 309.
Footnote 363:
Sir George Douglas, _Hogg_, pp. 38 f.
Footnote 364:
See the context of it in Lachmann u. Haupt, _Minnesangs Frühling_, pp.
221 ff.
Footnote 365:
Jeanroy, _Origines de la Poésie Lyrique en France_, Paris, 1889, Part
III., shows conclusively the origin of these songs in the public
dance.
Footnote 366:
“Balade” of the twelfth century: Bartsch, _Chrestomathie Provençale_,
p. 107. _Alavia_ = “away from us, begone,” the _procul este profani_
of the dancers. See also G. Paris, _Origines de la Poésie Lyrique_,
etc., a review of Jeanroy, Paris, 1892, pp. 12 ff. The rimes in -_ar_
running through this stanza and the rest, and certain touches of art,
show the changes in record; but the refrain and the spirit of the
piece are quite communal.
Footnote 367:
Quellien, _Chansons et Danses des Bretons_, Paris, 1889, p. 11, notes
that one event is not likely to be treated both in the song and in the
tale: “ce qui est tombé dans le domaine de la narrative prosaïque est
par cela même exclu desormais de la chanson.” Communal song must seize
present things; in the tales it was “once upon a time.”
Footnote 368:
Buckle, _Hist. Civ. Engl._, I. Chap. vi., calls ballads “the
groundwork of all historical knowledge,” and says they are “all
strictly true” at the start. The use of writing, he thinks, put an end
to their value.
Footnote 369:
This traditional, narrative song is called ballad throughout the
present book,—unfortunately an equivocal term. The terminology of the
whole subject is notoriously bad, and “ballad” is no exception to the
rule. See _Old English Ballads_, pp. xviii ff.; Blankenburg,
_Litterarische Zusätze u. s. w._, I. 387 ff., under “Dichtkunst”; for
modern “ballad,” Werner in the _Anzeiger für deutsches Alterthum_,
XIV. 165 ff., 190 f., XV. 259; for German names, Erich Schmidt,
_Charakteristiken_, pp. 199 ff.; on _balada_, Jeanroy, _Origines_,
etc., p. 403, who shows the passage of the word from its meaning as a
dance-song to the technical term for a fixed form of verse. In Corsica
a _ballata_ can be a lament (see below under _vocero_), and derives
from the dance round a corpse: J. B. Marcaggi, _Les Chants de la
Mort_, etc., Paris, 1898, p. 121, note on the _caracolu_, “a sort of
pantomime danced about the corpse by the mourning women, with gestures
of grief,” but now fallen out of use. Of course, the only point here
is to separate the ballad from songs like _Greensleeves_, from
journalism (for the so-called “ballad” under Elizabeth shows that her
folk were as anxious to get into print, or to keep out of it, as we
are in days of the newspaper), from occasional poetry, scurrilous
rimes, hymns, and all the rest. “Sonnet” was a word that then not only
meant any short poem, but occasionally made a little competition with
“ballad”; several of the ballads in the Rawlinson Collection, Bodleian
Library, are called “sonnet” either by title or in the text.
Footnote 370:
Work quoted, p. lxviii. Critics look at this narrative and treat it as
the only element in the ballad; but at every turn they should remember
that the original ballad was always property of a throng, was always
sung, was always danced, and was never without a dominant refrain.
Footnote 371:
Even Kleinpaul, sarcastic enough against Grimm, implies this condition
in his nine characteristics of popular poetry: _Von der Volkspoesie_,
published anonymously, 1860, and as supplement to his _Poetik_, 1870.
See p. 29.
Footnote 372:
Introduction to Rosa Warrens’s _Schwedische Volkslieder_, p. xix.
Footnote 373:
_Ancient Danish Ballads_, 1860, I. ix.
Footnote 374:
_Altgermanische Poesie_, p. 118. See also p. 52.
Footnote 375:
Heinzel, “Beschreibung d. isländ. Saga,” _Sitzungsberichte_, Vienna
Acad., phil. hist. class, 1897, p. 117.
Footnote 376:
Said of the Castilian and Aragonese ballads in Wolf’s _Proben portug.
u. catalan. Romanzen_, Vienna, 1856, p. 6. Here, too, he opposes the
idea, presently to be considered, that ballads are degenerate epic or
romance.
Footnote 377:
A broader account of the origin of ballads is given by Comparetti,
_Kalewala_, pp. 282 f. He refers them to the romantic and chivalric
sentiment of the late Middle Ages—beginning, say, with the eleventh
century—which passed from the “Romanic-Germanic centre of Europe” into
various tongues, was delivered to oral tradition as popular verse,
spread and flourished down to the sixteenth century, where it was
collected as _romancero_, _romanze_, _kæmpevise_, ballad. But
Comparetti neglects the communal conditions.
Footnote 378:
Of course it was the revival of learning, the humanistic spirit,
dividing lay society into lettered and unlettered, which really broke
up the communal ballad.
Footnote 379:
_Characters_, “A Franklin.”
Footnote 380:
Brand-Ellis, under Harvest Home. The “mell-supper,” may not derive its
name from _mesler_, as suggested, but the fact is clear enough.
Footnote 381:
Grosse, _Formen der Familie_, pp. 134 f.
Footnote 382:
_Proben_, etc., p. 6, as above, and also p. 31.
Footnote 383:
_Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, new ed., IV. 114 ff.
Footnote 384:
_Proceedings_, Internat. Folk-Lore Congress, 1891, p. 64.
Footnote 385:
Even in the material itself there is a shading from highly artistic
down to communal. _Thomas Rymer_ undoubtedly comes from a romance.
_The Boy and the Mantle_ has the flippancy of its origin in the
_fabliau_; Jeanroy, _Origines_, p. 155, declares such a touch of the
cynical to warrant one in taking the ballad out of that class which he
calls popular. _King Orfeo_ is a distorted tale from the classics.
Plain kin-tragedies, however, like _Babylon_, _Edward_, _The Twa
Brothers_, are simple enough for one to leave them to communal
origins, and not go source-hunting. Even where the motive seems
international, details may be home-made; how much of _Hero and
Leander_ is left in that Westphalian ballad, _Et wasen twei
Kunnigeskinner_? This story of the lovers and the lighted taper is
found in many folksongs. See Reifferscheid, _Westfälische
Volkslieder_, pp. 127 ff. In the classics and modern poetry,—witness
Musæos and Marlowe,—it belongs to art. Comparative mythology laid hold
of it, followed it back to India, and from India to the
skies,—spring-god, sea, stars, autumn storms, and the rest. But this
is needless bewilderment of a plain case; we have only to deal with
the way in which Westphalian peasants sing of prince and princess. In
three stanzas the story is told; all the rest deals with the situation
so given, and here the communal elements (see below, p. 196) come in.
The point is that study of subject-matter in ballads is distinct from
the study of ballad elements. These are constant in good ballads,
whether the subject be borrowed, or be local history, as in _Bessy
Bell and Mary Gray_, and the Border ballads generally. In addition to
the studies of ballad migration (e.g. _Sir Aldingar_) by Grundtvig and
by Child, see a close piece of investigation by Professor Bugge,
“Harpens Kraft,” in the _Arkiv for Nordisk Filologi_, VII. (1891), 97
ff.
Footnote 386:
In his introduction to the _Canti Populari del Piemonte_, p. xviii.
Footnote 387:
On the chasm between ballads of the collections and the recorded
beginnings of national literatures, see _Old English Ballads_, p.
lxxi.
Footnote 388:
See below, under Improvisation.
Footnote 389:
See remarks on “Crow and Pie,” _Ballads_, II. 478.
Footnote 390:
_Essays_, pp. 309 f.
Footnote 391:
See appendix on minstrels in the author’s _Old English Ballads_.
Footnote 392:
_Social Forces in German Literature_, p. 117. Talvj draws similar
conclusions: _Charakter._, etc., pp. 339, 405.
Footnote 393:
_Altdeutsches Liederbuch_, p. xxii. The personal theory is much more
temperately set forth, and with a better idea of throng-conditions, by
Jeanroy, _Origines_, p. 396.
Footnote 394:
This leprous monk has been a godsend to the writers on ballad origins.
But one might as well appeal to the _ego_ in a passage from Thomas
Cantipratensis, written near Cambrai, in 1263, and often quoted: Quod
autem obscoena carmina finguntur a daemonibus et perditorum mentibus
immittuntur, quidam daemon nequissimus qui ... puellam nobilem ...
prosequebatur, manifeste populis audientibus dixit: “Cantum hunc
celebrem de Martino ego cum collega meo composui et per diversas
terras Galliae et Theutoniae promulgavi”.... Here are individual
authorship—or collaboration: “I and a colleague of mine,” says the
demon,—aristocratic origins, and Prior’s lady in the case.
Footnote 395:
Villemarqué, _Barzaz-Breiz_, Paris, 1846, II. 285. _Le Temps Passé_
begins p. 273.
Footnote 396:
Or suppose one should pin the _ego_ folk to a belief in the statement
found in so many ballads that they are written by the person of whom
they sing! This statement is a favourite in Basque songs. See F.
Michel, _Le Pays Basque_, pp. 320 f.
Footnote 397:
Or take the _Schloss in Oesterreich_:—
Wer ist, der uns dies Liedlein sang?
So frei ist es gesungen;
Das haben gethan drei Jungfräulein
Zu Wien in Oesterreiche.
Footnote 398:
Compare the dance and singing of the Botocudos, above, p. 95.
Footnote 399:
No one now pretends that “Expliceth, quod Rychard Sheale,” at the end
of the Ms. of the old Cheviot ballad, makes Sheale the author of it.
Footnote 400:
Work quoted, p. lvii. The implied protest against Grimm, p. lxxxii,
must be read along with the passage just cited.
Footnote 401:
“Una creazione spontanea essenzialmente etnica.”
Footnote 402:
_Histoire Poétique de Charlemagne_, p. 2.
Footnote 403:
_Romania_, XIII. 617.
Footnote 404:
_Ibid._, p. 603.
Footnote 405:
_Hist. Po. Charl._, p. 11.
Footnote 406:
Driver, _Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament_, p. 389,
sums up for a modified acceptance of this theory. It seems clear that
some of the Psalms are distinctly individual in every way, and as
clear that many others are congregational and communal.
Footnote 407:
“Ueber das Ich der Psalmen,” _Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche
Wissenschaft_, VIII. (1888), 49-148. Against him _in toto_ is Dr.
Robertson, _The Poetry and the Religion of the Hebrews_, 1898. See pp.
20 ff., 260 ff.
Footnote 408:
_Religion of Israel to the Exile_, p. 198.
Footnote 409:
Robertson’s objection to this is trivial (work quoted, p. 283), and
shows a total lack of insight into the conditions of old communal
song. “It is becoming more and more plain,” says Donovan, _Lyre to
Muse_, p. 162, “that individuals could have had little to do with
forming the fashions and manner of Hebrew song.” It sprang from the
choral dance of the people, which later times called “idolatrous.”
Footnote 410:
_Vore Folkeviser fra Middelalderen_, Copenhagen, 1891, an admirable
book. See particularly, p. 39; also Talvj, _Charakteristik_, p. 340.
Footnote 411:
Wright and Halliwell, _Reliquiae Antiquae_, I. 248 f.
Footnote 412:
Sc. _fine_,—finish, end?
Footnote 413:
_Zeitschrift f. Völkerpsych._, V. 201. He notes a curious close found
in many ballads.—
Danube! Danube!
Thou shalt sing no more.
Footnote 414:
The opening or close of Germanic epic is often of this “I” character.
So the Hildebrand Lay, the _Béowulf_, the _Nibelungenlied_ at its end.
Later epic shows a poet in the case, who has his own wares to
announce. See R. M. Meyer, _Altgermanische Poesie_, pp. 357 ff., and
his references.
Footnote 415:
Steenstrup, work quoted, pp. 43, 28 f.
Footnote 416:
Often the reciter remarks that it is night; that he is tired, thirsty;
let the hearers come again on the morrow and each one bring a coin
with him,—and so on. See A. Tobler, _Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsych._, IV.
175, quoting from _Huon de Bordeaux_.
Footnote 417:
It was noted that the Botocudos had no legends, no song of the past. A
narrative song in the legendary sense is unknown to primitive folk;
what they sing is the event of the day, an improvised song of
sentences almost contemporary with the facts, cadenced by the communal
dance. The sense of time past is so slender even among North American
Indians (Powell, First Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology to
Smithsonian Inst., 1881, pp. 29 ff.), that while they admit that grass
grows, they “stoutly deny that the forest pines and the great sequoias
were not created as they are.” Now this primitive trait of poetry is
preserved in communal ballads; and from this strictly communal class,
long historical ballads, like those in German collections, should be
excluded. Kögel, _Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur_, I. 111, notes
that “the epic song ... is one of the later kinds of poetry.... It
cannot even be regarded as belonging to the common Germanic stock.”
But the communal narrative song is another matter.
Footnote 418:
“On American Aboriginal Poetry,” _Proc. Numismat. and Antiquar. Soc.
Philadelphia_, 1887, p. 19.
Footnote 419:
See Böckel, work quoted, cxix.
Footnote 420:
Steenstrup has some good remarks on this point, work quoted, pp. 188
ff., 203 ff.
Footnote 421:
Of far earlier date than ballads, this poetry is in a later stage of
evolution. _Wîdsið_, the oldest recorded English poem, shows more art
and more poetic dialect than many a bit of Scottish verse picked up a
century ago.
Footnote 422:
See R. Heinzel, _Ueber den Stil der altgermanischen Poesie_,
Strassburg, 1875; W. Bode, _Die Kenningar in der angelsächsischen
Dichtung_, Darmstadt u. Leipzig, 1886; R. M. Meyer, _Altgermanische
Poesie_. See too Uhland, _Klein. Schrift._, I. 390.
Footnote 423:
A kenning, with many branches in Anglo-Saxon poetry, calls survivors
of battle “the leavings of weapons.” This may once have been literal;
but in its context it looks as deliberate as Lamb’s phrase for a
resuscitated victim of the gallows,—“refuse of the rope, _the leavings
of the cord_” (_Inconveniences Resulting from Being Hanged_).
Footnote 424:
_Pop. Tales_, IV. 152.
Footnote 425:
The general testimony for all ballads. For example, Fauriel, _Chants
Populaires de la Grèce Moderne_, I. cxxix; these, he says, are full of
commonplaces and recurrent phrases; the diction is “simple, nervous,
and direct, that is, it has few figures, almost no inversions, and
progresses in short periodic and nearly equal passages.” Remains of
oldest Greek folk song show the same traits: Usener, _Altgriech.
Versbau_, p. 45.
Footnote 426:
_Wolfram von Eschenbach_, ed. Lachmann, p. 4.
Sîne klâwen
durh die wolken sint geslagen,
er stîget ûf mit grôzer kraft,
ih sih in grâwen ...
den tac ...
Footnote 427:
This may well go back to the summer songs, May-day songs, chorals, and
so on, of festal crowds; so Bielschowsky, _Geschichte der deutschen
Dorfpoesie_, Berlin, 1891, p. 13, concludes for the songs of Neidhart.
So, too, with songs on the conflict of summer and winter. Latin poets
of the Middle Ages led the way in regular description of nature. See
Wilmanns, _Walther_, p. 409. For the general case, Burckhardt, _Cultur
d. Renaissance_, II. 15; Uhland, _Klein. Schrift._, III. 388, 469.
Footnote 428:
_Færøiske Qvaeder_, p. 74.
Footnote 429:
Child, _Ballads_, I. 170.
Footnote 430:
Refrain or burden, not printed with the other stanzas, but sung
throughout.
Footnote 431:
Maid.
Footnote 432:
Of = by.
Footnote 433:
Deprived, parted.
Footnote 434:
The incremental repetition of this ballad could be matched by many
other cases. Typical is the combination of simple and incremental
repetition, also in triads, at the end of a French ballad, “Sur le
Bord de l’Ile,” Crane, _Chansons Populaires_, p. 28. Typical, too, is
the interesting Westphalian ballad, already noted, of the Hero and
Leander story: Reifferscheid, _Westf. Volksl._, pp. 2 f.; see _ibid._,
Nos. 2, 5. “Mother, my _eyes_ hurt me,—may I _walk_ by the sea?”—“Not
alone; take thy youngest brother.” Reasons follow against and for
this. Then repetition: my _eyes_ hurt me, may I not _walk_, etc. “Take
thy youngest sister,”—and incremental repetition of the reasons.
Then:—
“O mother,” said she, “mother,
My _heart_ is sore in me;
Let others go to the churches,—
I will _pray_ by the murmuring sea.”
Usually each increment has a stanza, but now and then compression
takes place, as in Motherwell’s version of _Sir Hugh_:—
She wiled him into ae chamber,
She wiled him into twa,
She wiled him into the third chamber,
And that was warst o’t a’ ...
And first came out the thick, thick blood,
And syne came out the thin,
And syne came out the bonnie heart’s blood ...
So with three horses, and what not. This triad is not necessarily
sprung from the “Dreitheiligkeit in der Lyrik,” of which Veit Valentin
discourses in the _Zeitschr. f. vgl. Lit._ (New Series) II. 9 ff.
“Dreitheiligkeit in der Lyrik,” comes rather from communal iteration
in primitive song and dance.
Footnote 435:
See his letter to Mason, _Works_, ed. Gosse, II. 36.
Footnote 436:
Professor Earle confuses, in a very uncritical way, the garrulity of
romances with the garrulity of epics and of ballads: see his _Deeds of
Béowulf_, p. xlix. A “voluble and rambling loquacity,” he says, is the
“natural character of the lay, and still more of the epic, which is a
compilation of lays.” And presently he says that the romances are “the
nearest extant representative of that unwritten literature which from
the very nature of things was undisciplined and loquacious.” Confusion
could hardly go beyond this.
Footnote 437:
_Ferienschriften_, I. 87.
Footnote 438:
“Das russische Volksepos,” _Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsych._, V. 187.
Footnote 439:
See above, p. 69.
Footnote 440:
See Porthan, _Opera Selecta_, III. 305-381. I quote from the original
dissertations _de Poesi Fennica_ 1778, pp. 57 ff. He begins by
lamenting the decay of old national song near the coast and under
clerical influence; intimates that song was a universal gift and was
improvised, although sundry bards are now eminent. Memorable events
slip into song, now convivial, now satiric; and there is great store
of proverbs. The description of dual singing begins with § XI.
Footnote 441:
“Præcentor, _Laulaja_ ... adjungit sibi alium socium sive adjutorem,
_Puoltaja_ sive _Saistaja_ dictum.”
Footnote 442:
“Quod facile jam ex sensu ipso, atque metri lege, reliquum pedem
conjectando definire licet.”
Footnote 443:
“Rarissimi stantes canunt; et si contingit aliquando, ut musarum
quodam afflatu moti stantes carmen ordiantur, mox tamen, conjunctis
dextris sessum eunt, et ritu solito cantandi continuant operam.” They
observe the rules of the game. Porthan, to be sure, notes the absence
of dancing as a national and pervasive affair; but the statement must
not go unchallenged. Long before this, Olaus Magnus (_Hist. de
gentibus Septentrion._, Romæ, 1555, Cap. VIII. lib. IV. 141) said of
the Lappland and other northern folk that they were often moved to
dance,—“excitentur ad saltum, quem vehementius citharoedo sonante
ducentes, veterumque heroum ac gigantum præclara gesta patrio rhytmate
et carmine canentes, in gemitus et alta suspiria, hinc luctus et
ululatum resoluti, dimisso ordine in terram ruunt,” a parlous state.
Scheffer, to be sure, discredits this statement of the archbishop
(_Lapponia_, 1673, p. 292); but Donner, _Lieder der Lappen_, p. 38,
believes it, and says it is confirmed by the report of a recent
Russian traveller.
Footnote 444:
Castrén, quoted by Comparetti, _Kalewala_, p. 66, note.
Footnote 445:
Talvj, _Charakteristik_, p. 87; Steenstrup, pp. 85 f.
Footnote 446:
_Ibid._, pp. 23 f.
Footnote 447:
Child, _Ballads_, I. 21.
Footnote 448:
See “Hans Michel,” and the notes to it in Reifferscheid, _Westjälische
Volkslieder_, pp. 47, 175. The song “Drüben auf grüner Haid,” pp. 51,
176, is used in the spinning-room, old home of communal minstrelsy, to
stir the women to their work. Further, see Coussemaker, _Chants Pop.
des Flamands de France_, p. 129, for a pious chanson: One is one, One
is God alone, One is God alone, And that we believe. Two is two, Two
Testaments, One God Alone ..., etc. Three is three, Three Patriarchs,
Two Testaments ... and so on, up to the Twelve Apostles. _Ibid._, pp.
333, 336 ff., 353, are comic songs of the kind; and these are highly
important, for they are songs of the dance, and still in vogue for
communal processions. Their main features are repetition—and the
refrain.
Footnote 449:
See Halliwell, _Nursery Rhymes_, p. 197:—
John Ball shot them all.
John Scott made the shot,—
But John Ball shot them all.
John Wyming made the priming,
And John Brammer made the rammer,
And John Scott ..., etc.
This is cumulative. But an old song of the fifteenth century is
incremental, a jolly bit of verse withal: Wright-Halliwell, _Reliquiae
Antiquae_, I. 4 f.—
The fals fox camme into owre croft,
And so owre geese ful fast he sought;
_Refrain_: With how, fox, how, with hey, fox, hey,
Comme no more into oure house to bere owre gese awaye.
The fals fox camme into _oure stye_ ..., etc.
Footnote 450:
E. H. Meyer, _Deutsche Volkskunde_, p. 124.
Footnote 451:
_Proben_, p. 34: “La Mina de Puigcerdá.”
Footnote 452:
K. L. Schröer, “Ein Ausflug nach Gottschee,” in _Sitzungsber._, Vienna
Acad., phil.-hist., LX. (1868), 165-288. See pp. 231 ff. One is
distantly reminded of the cumulative song (Chambers, _Popular Rhymes
of Scotland_, p. 35) of “Katie Beardie,”—for the dance:—
Katie Beardie had a coo,
Black and white about the mou’;
Wasna that a dentie coo?
Dance, Katie Beardie!
Katie Beardie had a hen,—
and cock, “grice,” so on,—probably as many animals as were won by her
distant cousin in Gottschee. See also the “Croodin Doo,” p. 51; “My
Cock, Lily Cock,” p. 31; “The Yule Days,” p. 42; and others.
Footnote 453:
Schröer, p. 274.
Footnote 454:
_Ibid._, p. 277.
Footnote 455:
To the young men invited thus to the wedding.
Footnote 456:
The Armenian bride does the singing herself, combining incremental
repetition with a refrain in which the crowd may join (Alishan,
_Armenian Popular Songs_, Venice, 1852: the third edition, 1888, omits
the name of the translator):
Little threshold, be thou not shaken;
It is for me to be shaken,
To bring lilies.
Little plank, be thou not stirred;
It is for me to be stirred,
To bring lilies.
Footnote 457:
Bladé, _Poésies Populaires de la Gascogne_, II. 220 ff. In the _Chants
Heroiques des Basques_, p. 48, Bladé tells how the Basques use these
songs of number.
Footnote 458:
_Ibid._, same page. Herd, _Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs_, I. 117
(reprint of 1869), among a number of marches more or less artificial,
prints a chorus:
Little wat ye wha’s coming,
Little wat ye wha’s coming,
Little wat ye wha’s coming,
Jock and Tam and a’s coming,
to which an indefinite series of incremental stanzas can be
added,—as:—
Duncan’s coming, Donald’s coming,
Colin’s coming, Ronald’s coming ...
and so the chorus, and again another stanza, and so on. A different
kind of song for the march is “Un wenn nu de Pott en Lock hett,”
printed by Firmenich, _Germaniens Völkerstimmen_, p. 187.
Footnote 459:
See his references, _Arbeit u. Rhythmus_, p. 71.
Footnote 460:
_Primitive Culture_, I. 86.
Footnote 461:
Tacitus, _Germania_, c. 10. Liliencron u. Müllenhoff, _Zur
Runenlehre_, Halle, 1852. Simple iteration, of course, is everywhere
in charms: _ter dices_ is the stage direction.
Footnote 462:
Grein-Wülker, _Bibliothek_, I. 317 ff.
Footnote 463:
D’Annunzio, following Baudelaire, revives repetition with considerable
effect to make up for lack of rimes in his _Elegie Romane_. See p. 69,
“Villa Chigi.”
Footnote 464:
By R. B. Gent. (Barnfield?), London, 1594, a rare book. See
Barnfield’s own _Hellens Rape_, ed. by Grosart for the Roxburgh Club,
1876.
Footnote 465:
A gentle shepherd born in Arcady,
Of gentlest race that ever shepherd bore.
No small influence in introducing this kind of repetition is due to
the imitations of classic verse, and the struggles of the Areopagus to
expel the tyrant Rime. Compare Spenser’s own experiment: _Now doe I
nightly waste_, quoted by Guest, _English Rhythms_, II. 270.
Footnote 466:
A suspicion that R. B. is japing (see his _Amyntas: A-mint-Asse_, in
the 4th of the fourteen “sonnets”), vanishes with careful reading of
these highly interesting “experiments.”
Footnote 467:
_Carm._ lxii. 39 ff.
Footnote 468:
Recorded as a fifteenth-century carol in the Sloane Ms.
Footnote 469:
See, however, the caution uttered by M. Jeanroy against the idea that
songs of the _Carmina Burana_ represent popular poetry (_Origines de
la Poésie Lyrique en France_, pp. 304 f.). Ingenious repetition,
whether in refrains of the _triolet_ type, or in the Portuguese type
represented by these verses, and in certain other poems of artificial
construction (Jeanroy, p. 309):—
Per ribeira do rio
vy remar o navio;
_et sabor ey da ribeyra_!
Per ribeyra do alto
vy remar o barco;
_et sabor_, etc.
Vy remar o navio
hy vay o meu amigo;
_et sabor_, etc.
Vy remar o barco,
hy vay o meu amado;
_et sabor_, etc.
are probably no popular making. See, however, above, p. 139, the
folksong of this type.
Footnote 470:
“Chume, chume, geselle min.” _Carmina Burana_, ed. Schmeller, pp. 208
f.
Footnote 471:
See also R. H. Cromek, _Select Scottish Songs_, London, 1810, I. 14,—
_Saw ye my Maggie?_
Footnote 472:
_Altgermanische Poesie_, pp. 228 f. See also Kluge, in Paul-Braune,
_Beiträge_, IX. 462 f.
Footnote 473:
Uhland, _Volkslieder_, I. 78.
Footnote 474:
Variations may advance the sentence, or simply hold it; thus
(_Bareaz-Breiz_):
Little Azénor the Pale is betrothed, but not to her lover,
Little Azénor the Pale is betrothed, not to her sweet “clerk”;
no advance; otherwise in a refrain:—
Come hearken, hearken, O folk,
Come hearken, hearken to the song!
which suggests the syntactic structure of old English poetry due to
alliterative variation.
Footnote 475:
A single sentence to the single verse is indicated in all primitive
poetry, and is still the rule in Russian folksong: Bistrom, _Zeitschr.
für Völkerpsy._, V. 185. Progress lay both in intension and in
extension,—regulation of the verse-parts, and combination of verses in
a strophe. For example, an element like rime or assonance was used to
bind verses now in couplets, now in a series like the old French
_tirade_.
Footnote 476:
_Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme Süd-Siberiens_, St.
Petersburg, 1866 ff.
Footnote 477:
_Ibid._, III. xix. See above on the closed account. Exotic literature,
and the _mullas_, learned poets, Radloff declares, are slowly driving
out folksong of every sort.
Footnote 478:
For a study of the artistic side of this improvised song, see Chap.
VIII. Here the communal conditions are to be emphasized, and the basis
of unvaried repetition is to be inferred.
Footnote 479:
Radloff, III. 34, note; 41.
Footnote 480:
Compare Hildebrand in the older lay, bidding his son Hathubrand put
him to the test of genealogies:—
“ibu dû mî ênan sagês, ik mî dê ôdre uuêt,
chind, in chuninerîche: chûd ist mî al irmindeot.”
Footnote 481:
Radloff, III. 48 f.
Footnote 482:
The so-called _Oelong_, with rime or assonance. _Ibid._, III. xxii.
The quatrain, as Usener points out in his _Altgriechischer Versbau_,
seems to have been the favourite measure for popular verse.
Footnote 483:
_Ibid._, I. 218 ff.
Footnote 484:
White and blue are the favourite variation. In a series, climax is
often displaced by anticlimax, as in the quotation below:
wife—betrothed; gold—silver; back—neck. For anticlimax with decreasing
numbers, see Radloff, II. 670.
Footnote 485:
Radloff, II. 669.
Footnote 486:
See Vilmar, _Deutsche Altertümer im Hêliand_, Marburg, 1862, pp. 3 f.
Footnote 487:
_Essai sur l’Histoire de la Critique chez les Grecs_, Paris, 3d ed.,
1887, pp. 6 f.
Footnote 488:
_Odyssey_, I. 352.
Footnote 489:
A study of marriage-songs must begin with choral sex-dances and songs
of the great periodic excitement, the mating-time, still observed by
Australian tribes, and work up through survivals of every sort to the
festal “epithalamies” and their deputies in the poetry of art.
Footnote 490:
E. H. Meyer, _Volkskunde_, p. 168.
Footnote 491:
Perhaps a survival, but surely an exceptional case, valuable only for
the communal feeling. See Pearson, who gives the facts, _Chances of
Death_, II. 141.
Footnote 492:
_Old English Ballads_, pp. xxxii ff.
Footnote 493:
Fauriel, _Chants Populaires de la Grèce Moderne_, Paris, I. 1824, II.
1825. See I. xxxvi. Roman literature gives hints of the same sort. The
first epithalamium of Catullus (lxi) is “an imitation of the national
custom”: Teuffel, _Hist. Roman Lit._, trans. Warr, p. 5.
Footnote 494:
The older wedding in Greece was of the same kind. See _Iliad_, XVIII.
491 ff.; K. O. Müller, _Griech. Lit._, p. 34. See too the burlesque at
the end of Aristophanes’s _Birds_, and H. W. Smythe, _Greek Melic
Poets_, p. cxx.
Footnote 495:
Hahn, _Albanesische Studien_, I. 144 ff.
Footnote 496:
See the whole section in Brand’s _Antiquities_ under “Marriage Customs
and Ceremonies.” The quotation is from _The Christian State of
Matrimony_, 1543.
Footnote 497:
_De antiquissima Germanorum poesi chorica_, Kiel, 1847, pp. 23
f.—“carmina nuptialia, quorum varia erant nomina,” etc. See also
Kögel, _Geschichte der deutschen Lit._, I. 44 f.
Footnote 498:
Kögel, pp. 44 f.
Footnote 499:
_Chronik_, ed. Dahlmann, I. 116 ff., 176. It is here that the good man
breaks out in a lament for the “leffliche schone Gesenge” that have
been lost. Bladé, _Poesies Pop. d. l. Gascogne_, I. xix ff., says the
wedding songs are both traditional and improvised, taking the form of
choral dialogues, where repetition is of course abundant.
Footnote 500:
“Das Volkslied Israels im Munde der Propheten,” in _Preussische
Jahrbücher_ LXXIII. (1893), 462.
Footnote 501:
Wetzstein, “Die syrische Dreschtafel,” in _Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie_, V. (1873), 288 ff. See p. 297.
Footnote 502:
The various German bridal songs printed by Firmenich, _Germaniens
Völkerstimmen_, are mostly artificial things; and one which goes to a
lively rhythm and is meant for a dance (I. 165) has fallen into mere
barnyard filth.
Footnote 503:
Lucian, _On Mourning_, 12 f. “A speech senseless and ridiculous,” he
says of the oration.
Footnote 504:
_Kl. Schrift._, III. 445.
Footnote 505:
See his _Gesch. d. d. Lit._, I. 47, 51.
Footnote 506:
Professor Smythe points out, _Greek Melic Poets_, p. cxiv, that Homer
describes a hymeneal but “nowhere alludes to the religious element in
the celebration of the rite.”
Footnote 507:
_Iliad_, XXIV, 719 ff., trans. Lang, Leaf, and Myers.
Footnote 508:
See H. Koester, _de Cantilenis Popularibus Veterum Graecorum_, Berol.,
1831, p. 15. Roman _neniae_, of course, are in point (see Sittl,
_Gebärden der Griechen und Römer_; Cap. IV.); but the artificial
element is very strong, and primitive survivals are few. Wordsworth,
_Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin_, p. 562, says of the epitaphs
on the Scipios, “Whether they were or were not fragments of _neniae_
is quite uncertain.”
Footnote 509:
Crude enough, to be sure, compared with Chaucer’s humour in dealing
with the funeral of Arcite:—
“Why woldestow be deed,” thise wommen crye,
“And haddest gold ynough, and Emelye?”
For this is the conventional question, in whatever form, in the
_vocero_ of all places and ages: “Why did you die? You had enough to
eat, you had clothes,” etc. Old Egeus has the modern consolation, and
philosophizes in no communal vein.
Footnote 510:
_Odyssey_, XXIV. 59 ff.
Footnote 511:
1117 f. It has been noted that Kögel, _Gesch. d. d. Lit._, I. 54,
says, without good reason, that this was a magic song, a _spruch_. It
was surely what it is called, a song of lament, a _vocero_, and
doubtless asked the same old question.
Footnote 512:
St. Augustine tells how such songs were sung at the tomb of St.
Cyprian: “per totam noctem cantabantur hic nefaria, et _cantantibus
saltabatur_.” See also the well-known passage from Burchard of Worms:
“cantasti ibi diabolica carmina et fecisti ibi saltationes”—_i.e._ at
the “vigiliis cadaverum mortuorum.” Müllenhoff, work quoted, pp. 26
ff., gives some of these protests of the church. On p. 30 he notes
that the songs themselves were improvised: _extempore et subito
facta_. The older the rite, the more choral and communal it grows. The
names (_ibid._, p. 25) are significant: _dâdsisas_, _leidsang_,
_chlagasang_, etc., for older German; _lîcsang_, _lîcleóð_
(_epicedium_), _byrgensang_ (_epitaphium_), etc., for older English.
Footnote 513:
_Béow._, 1322, 2124 f.
Footnote 514:
_Ibid._, 2446 f., 2460. There is a sort of _vocero_ echo here.
Remarkable, too, in the story of the self-buried chief, is a _vocero_
of that old man over himself, the last of the race burying his
treasure as a kind of substitute: _ibid._, 2233 ff. It is superfluous
to point out how English lyric poetry, from the _Ruin_ to the _Elegy_,
and on to our own day, loves to linger by a grave. Traces of the
_vocero_ that led to the vendetta might be found in the countless
stories of old Germanic feud.
Footnote 515:
_De Orig. Act. Getarum_, ed. Holder, c. 49. A similar story is told
(c. 41) of the funeral of King Theoderid of the Visigoths, killed in
451, and of the wild songs that were sung even on the field of battle
as the warriors bore away the body of their king.
Footnote 516:
Child, I. 182.
Footnote 517:
_Folk-Lore Soc. Pub._, IV. (1881), pp. 21, 31.
Footnote 518:
Scott, _Minstrelsy_, 1812, II. 361 ff.
Footnote 519:
Still found in remote places,—among Germans in North Hungary, and in
Gottschee in Krain, speech-islands both. Meyer, _Volkskunde_, p. 272.
Footnote 520:
“Dans der Maegdekens,” heard at Bailleul by Coussemaker. See his
_Chants Populaires des Flamands de France_, Gand, 1856, pp. 100 f.
Soon after 1840 it was forbidden, and the song is no more, save in the
record. It goes back, says C., to the oldest times.
Footnote 521:
_Ibid._, p. 101.
Footnote 522:
Budde, “Das hebräische Klagelied,” _Zeitschr. f. alttestamentl.
Wissensch._, II. 26 f.; and Wetzstein, “Syrische Dreschtafel,” as
quoted above. See also same _Zeitsch._, III. 299 ff. For the
professional singing-women, the _praeficae_ of Israel, see Jer. ix.
19.
Footnote 523:
Budde, “Die hebräische Leichenklage,” _Zeitschr. d. deutsch.
Palästina-Vereins_, VI. 181 f., 184 ff.
Footnote 524:
Work quoted, p. cxxxiii.
Footnote 525:
J. G. Hahn, _Albanesische Studien_, I. 150 f.
Footnote 526:
Precisely as among the Irish. See Miss Edgeworth’s account, quoted by
Brand, _Antiquities_, “Watching with the Dead.”
Footnote 527:
In a note, I. 198, Hahn notes that Plato forbade this wild cry
(_Legg._ xxi), but allowed the song of lament. For calling on the
dead, cf. Latin _inclamare_.
Footnote 528:
One of the canons which condemned heathen customs at Christian
funerals forbids not only song and dance, but also _illum ululatum
excelsum_.
Footnote 529:
The _vocero_ sung by natives of Algiers has been noted as strongly
resembling the Corsican. A specimen, quoted from Certeux and Carnoy,
_L’Algérie Traditionelle_, is full of repetition and refrain.
Footnote 530:
Springer, _Das altprovenzalische Klagelied_, Berlin, 1895, pp. 8 ff.
It is this formal poem of grief which is in the mind of Crescimbeni,
_Comentarj Intorno all’ Istoria della Volgar Poesia_, 1731, I. 256,
when he traces the Italian funeral song back to Latin and Greek.
Footnote 531:
This English Boileau, who “flourished,” in two senses, about 1200, is
good reading. His _Poetria_ begins at p. 862 of Polycarpi Leyseri ...
_Historia Poetarum et Poematum Medii Ævi_, Hal. Magd., MDCCXXI.
Footnote 532:
_C. T._, 4537 ff. The Latin:
_Temporibus luctus, his verbis exprime luctum._
Footnote 533:
Marcaggi, _Les Chants de la Mort et de la Vendetta de la Corse_,
Paris, 1898, p. 193, gives a _vocero_ said to have been made by a
monk, who calls on the celestial powers to join the chorus and wail
the death of his two friends: “Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Sacred Sacrament,
and all of you here in chorus, sing this _lamento_.” Bandits make a
_vocero_, pp. 307 f.
Footnote 534:
Jer. xxii. 18. See below, on the Linos song.
Footnote 535:
_Trionfo della Morte_, pp. 419 f. “Era l’antica monodia che da tempo
immemorabile in terra d’Abruzzi le donne cantavano su le spoglie dei
consanguinei.” See another account of the Italian _vocero_ in
Guastella, _Canti Popolari del Circondario di Modica_, Modica, 1876,
p. lxxix. He notes, moreover, that in Sicily the _prèfiche_ are called
_ripetitrici_.
Footnote 536:
Mérimée’s _Columba_ has made the _vocero_ familiar to readers. See
also Marcaggi, work quoted; Ortoli, _Les Voceri de l’Ile de Corse_,
Paris, 1887; Paul de St. Victor, _Hommes et Dieux_, Paris, 1872, pp.
349-369, a reprinted article cannily decocted and pleasantly served in
the English periodical _Once a Week_, 1867, pp. 437-442. St. Victor
refers to the older collections of Tommaseo and of Fée.
Footnote 537:
Marcaggi, p. 161. See above on the ride round the body of Beowulf and
of Attila, and the older dance. The _caracolu_ is “a sort of
pantomime, a funeral dance done by the mourners round the corpse as
they make gestures of grief.” The _caracolu_ is danced no more. And
again, Marcaggi, p. 231, note: “_vocerare_ ou _ballatrare_ veut donc
dire improviser un vocero,”—highly suggestive fact.
Footnote 538:
_Ibid._, p. 4; Ortoli, p. xxxiv. Of these two, Marcaggi prints mainly
the older material, with a few new pieces of miscellaneous character,
such as cradle-songs and serenades.
Footnote 539:
His philology is unnecessary, p. 85. Ortoli, too, should stick to his
“espèce de sanglot,” rather than follow his colleague’s “racine de
_titiare_” or contraction of _Oh Dio!_
Footnote 540:
Ortoli, p. 248.
Footnote 541:
_Manquait de tenue_, M., pp. 24 f.
Footnote 542:
See Marcaggi, pp. 157, 231, for a _vocératrice célèbre_. “La
vocératrice marche toujours à la tête des pleureuses,”—in going to the
funeral.
Footnote 543:
Such is No. X. in Marcaggi, a “_vocero_ sung by a woman in the square
of Canonica in the midst of a great crowd of women, priests, doctors,
and magistrates come from neighbour villages.”
Footnote 544:
A child who does this, and makes a _vocero_, declares that he will
bind the kerchief about his neck whenever he feels moved to laugh,—a
grim bit which throws into the shade that “child on the nourice’s
knee” of English ballads, who vows revenge if he shall live to be man.
Footnote 545:
On the vendetta in Italy during the renaissance, see Burckhardt,
_Cult. d. Ren._,⁶ II. 179 ff.
Footnote 546:
J. K. Bladé, _Dissertation sur les Chants Historiques des Basques_,
Paris, 1866, pp. 6 ff.; Borrow, _The Bible in Spain_, 1843, II. 394;
F. Michel, _Le Pays Basque_, 1857, pp. 277 f.
Footnote 547:
“They have not utterly disappeared from my country,” says Bladé,
_Poésies Populaires de la Gascogne_, introduction to Vol. I. p. xi;
and he prints a collection of them, pp. 212-231.
Footnote 548:
This is Bladé’s French rendering, pp. 212 ff. Beaurepaire, work
quoted, pp. 24 f., says these cries are no longer heard in Normandy.
Footnote 549:
“The men, old and young, take no part,” Bladé, I. xiii.
Footnote 550:
“Die syrische Dreschtafel,” _Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie_, V. (1873), 295
f.
Footnote 551:
_Die Adonisklage und das Linoslied_, Berlin, 1852, pp. 16 ff.
Footnote 552:
K. O. Müller, _Gesch. d. Griech. Lit._, I. 28, makes Linos the
personification of the soft spring slain by heats of summer.
Footnote 553:
Quoted by Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II. 32.
Footnote 554:
Taken from the German rendering of Brugsch.
Footnote 555:
_Mythologische Forschungen_, pp. 16, 55. Herodotus, II. 79, distinctly
says that the Maneros song was of the people.
Footnote 556:
For the general custom, see Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II. 36 ff.;
for Germanic relations, Pfannenschmidt, _Germanische Erntefeste_, pp.
165 ff.
Footnote 557:
Grosse, _Anfänge der Kunst_, p. 234.
Footnote 558:
_A Tour in Scotland_, 3d. ed., Warrington, 1774, p. 99.
Footnote 559:
Chaucer, who puts several home touches not known to Boccaccio or
Statius into his account of the funeral of Arcite in the “Knight’s
Tale,” speaks of the _lyche-wake_ as well as of the _wake-pleyes_,—the
latter, of course, funeral games. Pennant, by the way, in his _Second
Tour in Scotland_ (Pinkerton, III. 288), speaking of Islay and its
antiquities, says “the late-wakes or funerals ... were attended _with
sports and dramatic entertainments_.... The subject of the drama was
historical _and preserved by memory_.” (No italics in the original.)
Footnote 560:
See above, p. 222.
Footnote 561:
_Æn._, X. 473 ff.
Footnote 562:
Perhaps best in Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall’s _Ireland: its Scenery,
Character_, etc., 3 vols., London, 1841-1843. See I. 222 ff. The
authors mention the women who wept over Hector, with the odd
explanation that the Greeks were once in Ireland. Other accounts of
Irish funerals are quoted in Brand-Ellis, _Popular Antiquities_, as of
“the men, women, and children” who go before the corpse and “set up a
most hideous _Holoo_, _loo_, _loo_, which may be heard two or three
miles round the country.”
Footnote 563:
Quoted by J. C. Walker, _Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards_,
London, 1786, pp. 20 f. The keening of women who follow the hearse,
dressed sometimes in white and sometimes in black, “singing as they
slowly proceed ... extempore odes,” is sufficiently like the march of
the _praeficae_ at a Roman funeral; and in neither case has one the
primitive form of the rite.
Footnote 564:
_Transact. Royal Irish Academy_, IV., “Antiquities,” pp. 41 ff., read
December, 1791.
Footnote 565:
“Present State of Ireland,” _Works_, ed. Morris, pp. 625 f. Camden,
about the same time, _Britannia_, trans., ed. 1722, p. xix, speaks of
the bards as men who “besides ... their poetic functions do apply
themselves particularly to the study of genealogies.” See also Evan
Evans, _Specimens of the Poetry of the Antient Welsh Bards_, ...
London, 1764, p. 91. This is not primitive song.
Footnote 566:
Spenser, p. 633.
Footnote 567:
“Totenklagen in der litauischen Volksdichtung,” _Zst. f. vgl.
Litteraturgesch._, N. F., II. 81 ff.
Footnote 568:
A similar series of questions, with interesting details of the
ceremony, is given in the _Itinera Constantinopolitanum et Amasianum_
ab Angerio Gislenio Busbequij ... Antverpiæ, 1681, p. 28: “deuertimus
in pagum Semianorum Iagodnam: ubi ejus gentis ritus funebres vidimus
multum à nostris abhorrentes. Erat cadauer in templo positum detecta
facie: iuxtà erant apposita edulia, panis et caro et vini cantharus:
adstabant coniunx et filia melioribus ornata vestibus, filiae galerius
erat ex plumis pavonis. Supremum munus, quo maritum jam conclamatum
uxor donauit, pileolum fuit purpureum, cuius modi virgines nubiles
illic gestare solent. Inde lessum audiuimus et naeniam lamentabilesque
voces; quibus mortuum percunctabantur _quid de eo tantum meruissent,
quae res, quod obsequium, quod solatium ei defuisset; cur se solas et
miseras relinqueret: et hujus generis alia_.”
Footnote 569:
Compare the pathetic word of David about his dead child: 2 Sam., xii.
23.
Footnote 570:
Spencer, _Sociology_, I. § 142, quotes Bancroft, of the Indians of the
West, that for a long time after a death, relatives repair daily at
sunrise and sunset to the vicinity of the grave, to sing songs of
mourning and praise. Hahn tells the same thing of his Albanians, _Alb.
Stud._, I. 151 f.
Footnote 571:
Radloff, III. 22.
Footnote 572:
Often quoted from Kranz, _Grönländische Reise_. See also Boas, “The
Central Eskimo,” in _Report Bur. Ethn._, 1884-1885, Washington, 1888,
p. 614.
Footnote 573:
Quoted Spencer, _Soc._, III. § 126.
Footnote 574:
There was also a lament sung hard upon the death of a warrior in
battle. As the Goths bore away their dead king, singing a song of woe
in the midst of flying weapons, so with many savages. In a skirmish
which followed the murder of Captain Cook, a young islander was
killed, and the Englishmen next morning saw “some men carrying him off
on their shoulders, and could hear them singing, as they marched, a
mournful song.” Cook’s Last Voyage, in Pinkerton, _Voyages and
Travels_, XI. 723.
Footnote 575:
On _neniae_ as incantations, see Grimm, _Mythologie_,⁴ p. 1027.
Footnote 576:
The phrase for a capable person in incantation is found for Germanic
usage in the Merseburg Charm, here said of Wodan himself,—_sô hê unola
conda_; in Anglo-Saxon the same phrase is used for a skilled poet: _se
þe cuðe_, _Béow._, 90; and in Old Saxon for a wise man: _én gifrôdðt
man the sô filo konsta wisaro wordo_, _Hêliand_, 208.
Footnote 577:
For example, in mere invocation, the _Erce, Erce, Erce, eorðan modor_
of an Anglo-Saxon charm (Grein-Wülker, I. 314), and the actual spell
against stitch in the side (_ibid._, p. 318):—
Wert thou shot in the fell, or wert shot in the flesh,
Or wert shot in the blood [or wert shot in the bone],
Or wert shot in the limb ...
with more of the sort, and the solemn,—
This to heal shot of gods, this to heal shot of elves,
and so on, with a refrain in the epic part,—
Out, little spear, if it in here be’
Footnote 578:
Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, I. 367 ff.
Footnote 579:
Translated from the French in Pinkerton’s _Voyages and Travels_, XVI.
598 ff. See pp. 623 f.
Footnote 580:
_Ibid._, XVI. 877, 685, 596.
Footnote 581:
_Ibid._, VII. 534.
Footnote 582:
_Histoire d’un Voyage fait en la Terre de Bresil autrement dite
Amerique_ ... à la Rochelle, MDLXXVII. pp. 336 f.
Footnote 583:
“Au surplus au refrein de chacune pose.”
Footnote 584:
_Histoire de la nouvelle France_, Paris, MDCIX. See pp. 691 ff. On the
title-page he declares himself “témoin oculaire d’une partie des
choses ici recitées.”
Footnote 585:
_Mœurs des Sauvages Ameriquians, Comparées aux Mœurs des Premières
Temps_, ... 2 vols., 4to, Paris, 1724. See II. 321. Lafitau spent five
years in a mission in Canada, and also got information from a brother
Jesuit of sixty years’ experience in the new world (I. 2). It was this
book which moved Dr. John Brown, a century and a half ago, to write
his essay on the history of poetry and music, and to use so
effectively the comparative method in literature.
Footnote 586:
_Ibid._, II. 395.
Footnote 587:
_Anf. d. K._, p. 229.
Footnote 588:
_Indian Tribes_, IV. 71, question 254 (see I. 556): “Is it the custom
to call on certain persons for these laments? Are the laments
themselves of a poetic character?” Answered by Mr. Fletcher for the
Winnebago Indians.
Footnote 589:
_Ibid._, answer to question 253.
Footnote 590:
_Three Years’ Travel through the Interior Parts of North America_
(1766-1768), Philadelphia, 1796. See p. 179.
Footnote 591:
_Rep. Bureau Ethnol._, I. 194 f.
Footnote 592:
Wallaschek, _Prim. Mus._, p. 54.
Footnote 593:
_Ibid._, p. 198.
Footnote 594:
Wallaschek, _Prim. Mus._, p. 199. It is needless to insist on the
custom of dancing at funerals, and, in memorial rites, over the graves
of the dead; mediæval councils were full of warning against this
habit. The “dance of death,” of course, became symbolic and artistic.
Footnote 595:
Denied as a literal fact, as an affair of government and authority,
the matriarchate, so called, is sufficiently proved as the early form
of family life.
Footnote 596:
As the clan or horde had its song of triumph, and this is echoed and
prolonged in “national” songs like the _Marseillaise_, or, better, the
_Ça ira_, so the clan grief can expand into a national lament.
Something of this sort is found in that wail over the downfall of
their power sung by the Moors in Spain and so potent to stir the heart
that it was forbidden by government; its refrain, _Woe is me, Alhama_,
has all the iterated passion of grief that one finds in the primitive
_vocero_. Then there is the song or psalm of the captives in
Babylon,—and the list could be extended indefinitely.
Footnote 597:
The story is at first hand.
Footnote 598:
Work quoted, II. 324.
Footnote 599:
Account of Shelley’s last days, quoted in _Harper’s Magazine_, April,
1892, p. 786.
Footnote 600:
Schoolcraft, III. 326, “Poetic Development of the Indian Mind.”—For a
good collection of facts about iterated words as song, see the sixth
chapter of Wallaschek’s _Primitive Music_. For example, p. 173, “The
Macusi Indians in Guiana amuse themselves for hours with singing a
monotonous song, whose words, _hai-a_, _hai-a_, have no further
significance.” See also pp. 54, 56 f.
Footnote 601:
_Report Proceed. Numism. and Antiquar. Soc., Philadelphia_, 1887, pp.
18 f. (Printed 1891.)
Footnote 602:
Lectures, as quoted, II. 117, speaking of poetry before Homer. On the
origin of poetry in unintelligible sounds, see Ragusa-Moleti, _Poesie
dei Popoli Selvaggi_, Torino-Palermo, 1891, pp. vi ff., and
Jacobowski, _Anfänge der Poesie_, p. 66, who assumes that early man
held fast to those tones and gestures which expressed an original
sensation or emotion. On the repetition of mere sounds to express
emotion, see Alice C. Fletcher, _Journal American Folklore_,
April-June, 1898, p. 87.
Footnote 603:
_Travels in West Africa_, pp. 66 f.
Footnote 604:
V. 559 ff. “Original Words of Indian Songs literally translated.”
Footnote 605:
“Choral chant, four times repeated.” All Schoolcraft’s examples here
are full of repetition.
Footnote 606:
_Ibid._, III. 328.
Footnote 607:
_Ibid._, V. 563 f. See below, p. 310.
Footnote 608:
See above on Rhythm. In addition to the references given there, see
some sensible remarks in Emerson’s “Poetry and Imagination”; for
scientific discussion of repetition as basis of rhythm, see Gurney,
_Power of Sound_, pp. 455 f., and Masing, _über Ursprung u.
Verbreitung des Reims_, pp. 9 f. J. Grimm pointed out that
alliteration is really a form of repetition, _Kl. Schr._, VI. 161 f.
Adam Smith, _Essays_, pp. 154 f., has some curious remarks on
repetition as possible in music, but impossible in poetry.
Footnote 609:
W. von Biedermann, in two articles,—“Zur vergleichenden Geschichte der
poetischen Formen,” _Zeitschr. f. Vergl. Litteraturgesch._, N. F., II.
415 ff.; IV. 224 ff., and “Die Wiederholung als Urform der Dichtung
bei Goethe,” _ibid._, IV. 267 ff.,—traces the development of poetical
style from this fundamental fact of repetition. First, simple words
were repeated, then only part of the words in a sentence: such is the
case in old Chinese, in Zend, in Accadian. Then came parallelism; then
the repetition of similar sounds; _and finally metre or rhythm_
(_Versmass_). Where were the dancing throngs in this interesting
stretch of development, with rhythm as an afterclap of rime? As later
in his review of Bücher’s _Arbeit und Rhythmus_, so here, Biedermann
denies that rhythm came into poetry through music and the dance. He
fails, however, to make good this assertion by any show of proof (see
above, p. 75); but his references are useful for the student of
repetition. For another scheme of repetition in poetry, see R. M.
Meyer, _Altgermanische Poesie_, pp. 12 f.
Footnote 610:
Hence the inadequate character of its treatment, say for Old Norse, by
Vigfusson and Powell, _Corp. Poet. Bor._, I. 451 ff. R. M. Meyer,
_Altgerm. Poesie_, p. 341, takes a more excellent way, but he lays too
much stress on the ancient refrain, and not enough on the ancient
choral and the primitive communal conditions of song. Much more to the
point is the admirable though incomplete chapter on “Early Choral
Song” in Posnett’s _Comparative Literature_: see especially pp. 127
ff.
Footnote 611:
Wolf, _Lais_, pp. 23 f. The refrain was insistent in all poetry of the
troubadours and trouvères, and so leads back to refrains as the
prevalent characteristic of all songs in the vernacular. See Wolf’s
references, pp. 22 ff., and notes, pp. 184 ff. For a modern study of
this development of artistic forms of the refrain, see the third
chapter of the third part of Jeanroy’s excellent _Origines de la
Poésie Lyrique en France au Moyen Age_, Paris, 1889.
Footnote 612:
Ebert, _Lit. d. Mittelalters_, II. 63 f., 64 note.
Footnote 613:
See lxi, lxii. The Hymen cry, taken from the Greek, was there a
lending of communal wedding songs: see Smythe, _Greek Melic Poets_, p.
496. More artistic refrains are the
Currite ducentes subtegmina, currite, fusi,
of Catullus, lxiv. 323 ff., and the recurrent lines in Spenser’s
_Prothalamion_ and _Epithalamium_, which, of course, are on the same
artistic plane with that marriage-song of Peleus and Thetis.
Footnote 614:
Walter Pater’s pleasant account of the making of this song (_Marius
the Epicurean_, p. 73) is not improbable, in spirit at least; and it
must be borne in mind that this was the metre of marching songs of
Roman soldiers and other popular verse. See Du Meril, _Poésies
Populaires Latines_, Paris, 1843, pp. 106-117, including the
_Pervigilium Veneris_.
Footnote 615:
Bujeaud, “Refrains des Chansons Populaires,” in _Le Courier
Littéraire_, 25 Mai, 1877, pp. 256 ff. For reference to this article,
the present writer is indebted to Boynton’s dissertation, named and
quoted below.
Footnote 616:
“Le Refrain dans la Littérature du Moyen Age,” in _Revue des
Traditions Populaires_, III. 1 ff.; 82 ff.
Footnote 617:
J. Darmesteter, _Chants Pop. des Afghans_, Paris, 1888-1890, p. cxcvi,
calls the strophe “abstraction faite du refrain,”—a more excellent way
than these theorists take with their “little poem stuck in the cracks
of a big poem,” and such clever nonsense.
Footnote 618:
“Der Kehrreim in der mhd. Dichtung,” _Jahresber. d. Königl. Gymnas. zu
Paderborn_, 1890.
Footnote 619:
_Neuhochdeutsche Metrik_, p. 392. See R. M. Meyer, below.
Footnote 620:
_Zeitschr. f. vergleich. Lit._, I. 34 ff.; _Euphorion, Zeitschr. f.
Litteraturgesch._, V. (1898), 1 ff. He points out that nobody heeded
his view of the case, but that the works of Grosse, Groos, and Bücher
all brought confirmation to it.
Footnote 621:
All early accounts of dances among savages, South Sea islanders, and
the like, assert this priority of chorus over refrain. There are no
spectators, no audience, or “public”; all sing and all dance. See
Wallaschek in his first chapter, and Yrjö Hirn, _Förstudier till en
Konstfilosofi_, Helsingfors, 1896, p. 148.
Footnote 622:
Zell, _Ferienschriften_, II. 111 f., notes that this sort of
repetition is found in old Etruscan prayers as well as in the liturgy
of the Roman church.
Footnote 623:
By Wordsworth, work quoted; see, too, F. D. Allen, _Remnants of Early
Latin_, p. 74, with interesting remarks on the fragments of the
_Carmina Saliaria_, the _axamenta_.
Footnote 624:
Kögel, _Gesch. d. d. Lit._, I. 31, 34 f., points out the close
resemblance of the conditions and circumstances of this hymn with
those of the old German hymns, of which we have no example; he
therefore infers for the latter the same repeated cries to the god,
and finds confirmation for this inference in the dancing, the
repetitions and the cries of a Gothic Christmas play, written in
Latin, in Greek characters, but with a Gothic original peeping
through. Müller’s attempt to restore this Latin-Gothic hymn is highly
interesting.
Footnote 625:
Westphal, _Allgem. Metrik_, p. 37.
Footnote 626:
Also dramatic poetry, as in Job; for example, the refrain in the
speeches of the messengers who tell Job of his calamity, “And I only
am escaped alone to tell thee.” See Moulton’s arrangement in his
edition of Job, pp. 10 f.
Footnote 627:
For these refrains see Driver, _Introd. to the Lit. of the Old Test._,
p. 366 (original ed., p. 344). They are sometimes exactly repeated,
sometimes varied. For the poetry due to the Hebrews in general, see
Renan, _Mélanges_, p. 12.
Footnote 628:
2 Sam. vi, 14 f.
Footnote 629:
Lowth, _de sacra Poesi Hebr._, ed. Rosenmüller, p. 205, citing “Nehem.
xii, 24, 31, 38, 40, et titulum Ps. lxxxviii.” D. H. Müller, _Die
Propheten in ihrer ursprünglichen Form_, Vienna, 1896, I. 246 f.,—a
somewhat discredited work with regard to the theory of Hellenic and
Hebrew relations, but seemingly sound in these facts. Budde, _Religion
of Israel to the Exile_, pp. 97, 100. The “prophets” who came to
England from the Cevennes make another modern instance; and there are
many more in the great development of religious enthusiasm in the
seventeenth century.
Footnote 630:
Exod. xv. 1. 20 f. Clearly the whole tribe: see above, p. 186.
Footnote 631:
1 Sam., xviii. 1 ff. Lowth says of the _one to another_: “hoc est,
alternis choris carmen amoebaeum canebant; alteris enim praecinentibus
‘Percussit Saulus millia sua,’ alterae subjiciebant ‘et David suas
myriadas.’” Perhaps. _Amant alterna Camenæ._ But it was rude amœbean,
then, a tumultuous chorus, just as in the Fescennine songs of old
Italy, and in the songs of Roman soldiers, a roughly divided pair of
choruses sang alternately: see Zell, _Ferienschriften_, II. 149. On
the choral nature of old Hebrew poetry see this whole passage in
Lowth, pp. 205 f.
Footnote 632:
In the year 446. The story is often quoted from Priscus, 188, 189.
Footnote 633:
Böckel, work quoted, p. cviii.
Footnote 634:
“Ex qua victoria carmen publicum juxta rusticitatem per omnium ora ita
canentium, feminaeque choros inde plaudendo componebant.” Mabillon,
_Acta Sanctorum ordinis S. Benedicti_, Venetis, 1733, II. 590. This
clapping of hands as one dances and sings is often found in communal
records, and is common among savages, negroes, and the like. Among
tribes on the White Nile, where no musical instruments were to be had,
girls clapped their hands to the song and dance: Wallaschek, p. 87,
and also cf. p. 102, the account of women seen by Captain Cook to snap
their fingers in marking time for their song. The practice is common
elsewhere; for Polynesia generally, see Waitz-Gerland, _Anthropol._,
VI. 78 f. Sidonius Apollinaris speaks of it, I. 9:—
Castalidumque choros vario modulamine plausit
Carminibus, cannis, pollice, voce, pede;
while a dance to this hand-clapping is represented on an Assyrian
monument: see Herrig’s _Archiv_, XXIV. 168, quoted by Böckel in the
introduction to his Hessian ballads.—That actual songs were made by
these women is clear; see the passage from Guillaume de Dôle, quoted
by Jeanroy, _Origines_, p. 309:—
que firent puceles de France
a l’ormel devant Tremilli
on l’en a maint bon plet basti.
Footnote 635:
London, 1811, p. 420. See also Ritson, _Scottish Song_, I. xxvi, f.
Maydens of Englande, sore may you mourne
For your lemmans ye have lost at Bannockisburne!
_With heve a lowe._
What, weeneth the King of England
So soone to have won Scotland!
_With rumbylowe._
This refrain, as will be seen, is a kind of water-chorus.
Footnote 636:
_Bruce_, ed. Skeat, E. E. T. S., p. 399.
Footnote 637:
_Brut_, ed. Madden, 9538 f.
Footnote 638:
A notable exception is K. O. Müller, who studied early Greek song in
connection with early Greek life, an example—as Posnett notes in some
excellent remarks, _Compar. Lit._, p. 104—which subsequent historians
have neglected to their own harm.
Footnote 639:
Smythe, _Melic Poets_, p. 490.
Footnote 640:
For reference to the older literature of this subject, see
Blankenburg, _Litterar. Zusätze_, I. 235 ff.
Footnote 641:
Déor’s song, of course, is divided into strophes or stanzas by means
of this refrain.
Footnote 642:
See above, p. 86, on the dispute between Sievers and Möller, and their
agreement regarding this change from song to recitation.
Footnote 643:
_Altgerm. Poesie_, pp. 341, 345.
Footnote 644:
_De Antiquissima Germanorum Poesi Chorica_ ... Kiel, 1847.
“Antiquissimum enim omnium poesis genus haud dubie illud est, quod
choricum dicitur.” See p. 5: “Carmina vero haec sacra ... ex communi
populorum usu, _non a rhapsodis recitata neque a singulis, sed semper
a choro sive pluribus simul et cantata et acta sunt_.”
Footnote 645:
The best recent summary is that of Kögel in the first volume of his
_Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur_.
Footnote 646:
See p. 6 of Müllenhoff: “Actionum autem choricarum triplex est genus:
pompa, saltatio, ludus; quorum et simplicissimum est pompa et quasi
primitivum.” He treats only the first of these three; but a valuable
paper on the sword-dance (“Ueber den Schwerttanz,” in the _Festgabe
für G. Homeyer_, 1871), the essay _De Carmine Wessofontano_, and many
hints in his introduction to the _Sagen, Märchen u. Lieder d.
Herzogth. Schleswig-Holstein u. Lauenburg_, 1845, make up the
omission.
Footnote 647:
Kögel, work quoted, p. 18. See his references, p. 17, for these
refrains and songs of war.
Footnote 648:
Well meant but ludicrous compilations, designed to offer songs of
solace and cheer to all sorts of labourers, and to drive out the idle
rimes which they are wont to sing, are cleverly noted in Hoffmann von
Fallersleben’s _Unsere Volksthümlichen Lieder_, Leipzig, 3d ed., 1869;
the specimens he gives in his introduction are highly amusing, and are
taken from Becker’s _Mildheimisches Lieder-Buch_, 1799, which provides
special songs for the butcher, the chimney-sweep, the
scissors-grinder, and all the rest. See Hoffmann, pp. vii ff.
Footnote 649:
A Lithuanian mill-song: see Bücher, p. 39. See also Porthan, work
quoted above, p. 198. He gives a pretty little song of a Finnish woman
who calls for her absent husband in no recondite terms, ending:—
Liki, liki, linduiseni,
Kuki, kuki, kuldaiseni!—
that is, “prope, prope, deliciae meae; juxta, juxta, corculum meum.”
Footnote 650:
“Agrestum quendam concentum edere solent ... hocque verbum ad
cantilenae similitudinem repetunt.” Pistorius, _Polon. Hist. Corp._,
I. 46, quoted by Bezzenberger, _Zeitsch. f. vgl. Lit._, N. F., I. 269.
Footnote 651:
Smythe, _Greek Melic Poets_, pp. 160, 510 f.—Bücher, p. 38, notes that
this song, like many a lost refrain of the same kind, disregards the
rules of classical metre, and follows the movement of the
millstone.—Pennant (_Second Tour in Scotland_), Pinkerton, III. 314,
compares the singing at the mill of the island women with
Aristophanes’ _Clouds_, Act V. scene 11.
Footnote 652:
_Pros. Edda_, ed. Wilken, “Skáldskaparmál,” xliii. pp. 123-134; cf.
4:—
sungu ok slungu
snúðga steini ...
Footnote 653:
Böckel, work quoted, lxiii f., where there are other references of the
sort. So in pounding wheat, women in North Africa sang a national song
in chorus, always pounding in time with the music, Wallaschek, p. 220.
Footnote 654:
Bücher, p. 60, is emphatic on this point, that the refrain is to be
regarded as the oldest part of all songs of labour.
Footnote 655:
Act V.
Footnote 656:
Zell, _Ferienschriften_, II. 99 ff., “Ueber die Volkslieder der alten
Römer,” is still the best piece of information on the subject,
although it was published in 1829.
Footnote 657:
In carrying loads, in cutting, and the like tasks, the Lhoosai in
southeast India “clear the lungs with a continuous _hau! hau!_
_uttered in measured time by all_; without making this sound they say
they would be unable to work.” Lewin quoted by Böckel, p. lx.
Footnote 658:
_Arbeit u. Rhythmus_, pp. 30 ff. This chapter, quoted above, pp. 107
ff., gives ample references for the subject.
Footnote 659:
_Ehstnische Volkslieder_, 1850, p. 1.
Footnote 660:
_Deutsche Volkskunde_, 1898, pp. 331 f.
Footnote 661:
Work quoted, p. cxxiii. The spinning-room for winter, and in summer
the _rundgänge_, when youths and maidens arm in arm go by long rows
singing songs to their march, are still a refuge for actual poetry of
the people. But, as he says, it is dying fast.
Footnote 662:
Böckel, work quoted, p. clii, notes that the three classes who spread
and sing songs of the folk are women, soldiers, shepherds. Blind
minstrels, of course, are to be added for the chanting and reciting
guild, and in Russia the tailors. But women, soldiers, and shepherds
best keep the old clan instincts.
Footnote 663:
Laura Alexandrine Smith, _Music of the Waters_, London, 1888; John
Ashton, _Real Sailor Songs_, London, 1891. Boatmen’s songs changing or
dying out: Bücher, pp. 128 f. Bücher’s little group of boatmen’s
songs, pp. 118 ff., 66 ff., is far more valuable than these long and
random collections. See his comments, pp. 68 ff. For example, the
boat-song of North American Indians, taken from Baker, is foolishness
to the Greeks who make collections for popular use, but is full of
instruction for the student of poetry; it runs, without the musical
notes:—
Ah yah, ah yah, ah ya ya ya,
Ah ya ya ya, ah ya ya ya,
Ya ya ya ya ya ya.
Footnote 664:
Böckel, p. lx. Roman oarsmen had not only the _celeusma_ to time their
strokes, but often a song of their own: Zell, II. 208.
Footnote 665:
Ed. Murray, E. E. T. S., pp. 40 ff.
Footnote 666:
Bücher, p. 68.
Footnote 667:
Wallaschek, pp. 41, 47. See, too, p. 166: “Mr. Reade observed that his
people”—Africans—“always began to sing when he compelled them to
overcome their natural laziness and to continue rowing.”
Footnote 668:
Chappell, _Pop. Music Olden Time_, pp. 482, 783; Skelton, _Bowge of
Court_.
Footnote 669:
“Cantilenam his verbis Anglice composuit;” see _Historia Eliensis_,
II. 27, in Gale, _Hist. Script._, I. 505; it gives the account here
quoted, then the verses, adding “et caetera, quae sequuntur, _quae
usque hodie in choris publice cantantur_.” ...
Footnote 670:
_Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser_, III. x f.; _Nordboernes Aandsliv_, II.
408.
Footnote 671:
Refrains of rowing are found in many Danish ballads, mostly
irrelevant, as these refrains so often are, but unmistakable. See
Steenstrup, _Vore Folkeviser_, p. 77, for several examples.
Footnote 672:
In Wright-Halliwell, _Reliquiae Antiquae_, I. 240: it belongs to the
fourteenth century. Some rimes for St. Clement’s day are printed by G.
F. Northall, _English Folk-Rhymes_, 1892, mostly begging verses (pp.
222 ff.): although there is a ceremony at Woolwich connected with
blacksmiths, song, however, yielding to formal speech.
Footnote 673:
23 November. See Hampson, _Medii Aevi Kalendarium_, I. 61; and
Brand-Ellis, _Antiquities_, same date. The Germanic year has been
recently studied by Dr. A. Tille, _Yule and Christmas_, London, 1899;
he corrects in some particulars the current ideas set forth by
Weinhold, according to which the seasons were regulated by natural
signs,—solstice and the like. Dr. Tille contends that this was rather
done by economic conditions. Before the German had a settled
agricultural life, Michaelmas superseded Martinmas, the oldest
Germanic festival. Actual harvest festivals are comparatively late.
While Dr. Tille’s idea of borrowing and of Christian influence goes
entirely too far, his emphasis on economic conditions must be noted
and approved.
Footnote 674:
_Great Expectations_, Chap. XII.
Footnote 675:
Or rather Mr. J. Cocke; see note to _Works_, ed. Rimbault, p. 288, and
p. 89. See also the tinker as “master of music” and chief singer of
catches, in Chappell, pp. 187. 353.
Footnote 676:
Among the Romans, too; see Tibullus, Eleg. II. 1:—
Atque aliqua assiduae textis operata Minervae
Cantat, et applauso tela sonat latere.
Footnote 677:
See letter in _Evening Post_, quoted above, p. 168; Böckel, work
quoted; and the preface written by “Carmen Sylva” for the Countess
Martinengo’s _Bard of the Dimbovitzka_, London, 1892.
Footnote 678: