Page:A Study of Fairy Tales.djvu/230

206 Repetition and rhythm have grown out of communal conditions. The old stories are measured utterances. At first there was the spontaneous expression of a little community, with its gesture, action, sound, and dance, and the word, the shout, to help out. There was the group which repeated, which acted as a chorus, and the leader who added his individual variation. From these developed the folk-tale with the dialogue in place of the chorus.

Of the accumulative tales. The House that Jack Built illustrates the first class of tales of simple repetition. This tale takes on a new interest as a remarkable study of phonics. If any one were so happy as to discover the phonic law which governs the euphony produced by the succession of vowels in the lines of Milton's poetry, he would enjoy the same law worked out in The House that Jack Built. The original, as given by Halliwell in his Nursery Rhymes of England, is said to be a Hebrew hymn, at first written in Chaldaic. To the Hebrews of the Middle Ages it was called the Haggadah, and was sung to a rude chant as part of the Passover service. It first appeared in print in 1590, at Prague. Later, in Leipzig, it was published by the German scholar, Liebrecht. It begins:—

Then follow the various repetitive stanzas, the last one turning back and reacting on all the others:—