Alavi', alavia, jelos,
laissaz nos, laissaz nos
ballar entre nos, entre nos!
[3] Games and songs of children are still to be found which
preserve many of the features of these old dance-songs. The
dramatic traits met with in the games point back now to the
choral poetry of pagan times, when perhaps a bit of myth was
enacted, now to the communal dance where the stealing of a
bride may have been imitated.
[4] Unless otherwise credited, translations are by the
writer.
That is, "if spring were here, and the girls were going to the village
dance"; for ball-playing was not only a rival of the dance, but was
often combined with it. Walther's dactyls are one in spirit with the
fragments of communal lyric which have been preserved for us by
song-loving "clerks" or theological students, those intellectual
tramps of the Middle Ages, who often wrote down such a merry song of
May and then turned it more or less freely into their barbarous but
not unattractive Latin. For example:--
Now is time for holiday!
Let our singing greet the May:
Flowers in the breezes play,
Every holt and heath is gay.
Let us dance and let us spring
With merry song and crying!
Joy befits the lusty May:
Set the ball a-flying!
If I woo my lady-love,
Will she be denying?[5]
[5] From 'Carmina Burana,' a collection of these songs in
Latin and German preserved in a MS. of the thirteenth
century; edited by J. A. Schmeller, Breslau, 1883. This song
is page 181 ff., in German, 'Nu Suln Wir Alle Froeude Han.'
The steps of the dance are not remote; and the same echo haunts
another song of the sort:--
Dance we now the measure,
Dance, lady mine!
May, the month of pleasure,
Comes with sweet sunshine.
Winter vexed the meadow
Many weary hours:
Fled his chill and shadow,--
Lo, the fields are laughing
Red with flowers.[6]
[6] Ibid., page 178: 'Springe wir den Reigen.'
Or the song at the dance may set forth some of the preliminaries, as
when a girl is supposed to sing:--
Care and sorrow, fly away!
On the green field let us play,
Playmates gentle, playmates mine,
Where we see the bright flowers shine,
I say to thee, I say to thee,
Playmate mine, O come with me!
Gracious Love, to me incline,
Make for me a garland fine,--
Garland for the man to wear
Who can please a maiden fair.
I say to thee, I say to thee,
Playmate mine, O come with me![7]
[7] Ibid., page 213: 'Ich wil Truren Varen lan.'
The greeting from youth to maiden, from maiden to youth, was doubtless
a favorite bit of folk-song, whether at the dance or as independent
lyric. Readers of the 'Library' will find such a greeting incorporated
in 'Child Maurice'[8]; only there it is from the son to his mother,
and with a somewhat eccentric list of comparisons by way of detail,
instead of the terse form known to German tradition:--
Soar, Lady Nightingale, soar above!
A hundred thousand times greet my love!
[8] Article in 'Ballads,' Vol. iii., page 1340.
The variations are endless; one of the earliest is found in a charming
Latin tale of the eleventh century, 'Rudlieb,' "the oldest known
romance in European literature." A few German words are mixed with the
Latin; while after the good old ballad way the greeting is first given
to the messenger, and repeated when the messenger performs his
task:--"I wish thee as much joy as there are leaves on the trees,--and
as much delight as birds have, so much love (_minna_),--and as much
honor I wish thee as there are flowers and grass!" Competent critics
regard this as a current folk-song of greeting inserted in the
romance, and therefore as the oldest example of _minnesang_ in German
literature. Of the less known variations of this theme, one may be
given from the German of an old song where male singers are supposed
to compete for a garland presented by the maidens; the rivals not only
sing for the prize but even answer riddles. It is a combination of
game and dance, and is evidently of communal origin. The honorable
authorities of Freiburg, about 1556, put this practice of "dancing of
evenings in the streets, and singing for a garland, and dancing in a
throng" under strictest ban. The following is a stanza of greeting in
such a song:--
Maiden, thee I fain would greet,
From thy head unto thy feet.
As many times I greet thee even
As there are stars in yonder heaven,
As there shall blossom flowers gay,
From Easter to St. Michael's day![9]
[9] Uhland, 'Volkslieder,' i. 12.
These competitive verses for the dance and the garland were, as we
shall presently see, spontaneous: composed in the throng by lad or
lassie, they are certainly entitled to the name of communal lyric.
Naturally, the greeting could ban as well as bless; and little Kirstin
(Christina) in the Danish ballad sends a greeting of double charge:--
To Denmark's King wish as oft good-night
As stars are shining in heaven bright;
To Denmark's Queen as oft bad year
As the linden hath leaves or the hind hath hair![10]
[10] Grundtvig, 'Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser,' iii. 161.
Folk-song in the primitive stage always had a refrain or chorus. The
invocation of spring, met in so many songs of later time, is doubtless
a survival of an older communal chorus sung to deities of summer and
flooding sunshine and fertility. The well-known Latin 'Pervigilium
Veneris,' artistic and elaborate as it is in eulogy of spring and
love, owes its refrain and the cadence of its trochaic rhythm to some
song of the Roman folk in festival; so that Walter Pater is not far
from the truth when he gracefully assumes that the whole poem was
suggested by this refrain "caught from the lips of the young men,
singing because they could not help it, in the streets of Pisa,"
during that Indian summer of paganism under the Antonines. This
haunting refrain, with its throb of the spring and the festal throng,
is ruthlessly tortured into a heroic couplet in Parnell's
translation:--
Let those love now who never loved before;
Let those who always loved now love the more!