Chapter VIII: The Triumph of the Artist (4)

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: