Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/300

284 of the notes or marks of popular poetry than the instruc tions which M. Ampere gave to the committee appointed in 1852-53 to search for the remains of ballads in France. M. Ampere bade the collectors look for the following char acteristics : &quot; The use of assonance in place of rhyme, the brusque character of the recital, the textual repetition, as in Homer, of the speeches of the persons, the constant use of certain numbers, as three and seven, and the representation of the commonest objects of every-day life as being made of gold and silver.&quot; M. Ampere might have added that French ballads would probably employ a &quot; bird- chorus,&quot; the use of talking-birds as messengers ; that they would repeat the plots current in other countries, and dis play the same non-Christian idea of death and of the future world, the same ghostly superstitions and stories of metamorphosis, and the same belief in elves and fairies, as are found in the ballads of Greece, of Provence, of Brit tany, Denmark, and Scotland. We shall now examine these supposed common notes of all genuine popular song, supplying a few out of the many instances of curious identity. As to brusqueness of recital, and the use of assonance instead of rhyme, as well as the aid to memory given by reproducing speeches verbally, these are almost unavoidable in all simple poetry preserved by oral tradition. In the matter of recurring numbers, we have the eternal— Trois belles filles L y en a z une plus belle que le jour,&quot; who appear in old French ballads, as well as the &quot; Three Sailors,&quot; whose adventures are related in the Lithuanian and Provensal originals of Mr Thackeray s Little Billed. Then there is &quot; the league, the league, the league, but barely three,&quot; of Scotch ballads ; and the rpta TrouAa/aa, three golden birds, which sing the prelude to Greek folk songs, and so on. A more curious note of primitive poetry is the lavish and reckless use of gold and silver. M. Tozer, in his account of ballads in the Highlands of Turkey, remarks on this fact, and attributes it to Eastern influences. But the horses shoes of silver, the knives of fine gold, the talking &quot; birds with gold on their wings,&quot; as in Aristophanes, are common to all folk-song. Everything almost is gold in the Kahvala, an epic formed by putting into juxtaposition all the popular songs of Finland. Gold is used as freely in the ballads, real or spurious, which M. Verkovitch has had collected in the wilds of Mount Rhodope. The captain in the French song is as lavish in hia treatment of his runaway bride,— &quot; Son amant 1 habille, Tout en or et argent ;&quot; and the rustic in a song from Poitou talks of his faucillc d or, just as a variant of Hugh of Lincoln introduces gold chairs and tables. Again, when the lover, in a ballad common to France and to Scotland, cuts the winding sheet from about his living bride &quot; il tira ses ciseaux d or fin.&quot; If the horses of the Klephts in Romaic ballads are gold shod, the steed in Willie s Lady is no less splendidly accoutred,— {{ti|1em|&quot; Silver shod before, And gowden shod behind.&quot;|7 Readers of Homer, and of the Chanson de Roland, must have observed the same primitive luxury of gold in these early epics. {{ti|1em|Next as to talking-birds. These are not so common as in {{abbr|{{lang|de|Märchen}}|German: fairy tales}}, but still are very general, and cause no surprise to their human listeners. The omniscient popinjay, who &quot; up and spoke &quot; in the Border minstrelsy, is of the same family of birds as those that, according to Talvj, pervade Servian song; as the rpia. TrovAa/ad which introduce the story in the Romaic ballads ; as the wise birds whose speech is still understood by exceptionally gifted Zulus ; as the wicked dove that whispers temptation in the sweet French folk-song; as the &quot;bird that came out cf a bush, on water for to dine,&quot; in the Water o Wearies Well.}} {{ti|1em|In the matter of identity of plot and incident in the ballads of various lands, it is to be regretted that no such comparative tables exist as Von Halm tried, not very exhaustively,&quot; to make of the &quot; story-roots &quot; of Mdrchen. A common plot is the story of the faithful leman, whose lord brings home &quot; a braw new bride,&quot; and who recovers his affection at the eleventh hour. In Scotland this is the ballad of Lord Thomas, and Fair Annie ; in Danish it is Skiaen Anna. It occurs twice in M. Fauriel s collection of Romaic songs. Again, there is the familiar ballad about a girl who pretends to be dead, that she may be borne on bier to meet her lover. This occurs not only in Scotland, but in the popular songs of Provence (collected by Damase Arbaud) and in those of Metz (Puymaigre), and in both countries an incongruous sequel tells how the lover tried to murder his bride, and how she was too cunning, and drowned him. Another familiar feature is the bush and briar, or the two rose trees, which meet and plait over the graves of unhappy lovers, so that all passers-by see them, and say in the Provençal,—}} {{ti|7em|&quot; Diou ague 1 amo Des paures amourous.&quot;}} Another example of a very wide-spread theme brings us to the ideas of the state of the dead revealed in folk-songs. The Night Journey, in M. Fauriel s Romaic collection, tells how a dead brother, wakened from his sleep of death by the longing of love, bore his living sister on his saddle bow, in one night, from Baghdad to Constantinople. In Scotland this is the story of Proud Lady Margaret; in Germany it is the song which Burger converted into Lenore ; in Denmark it is Aagd und Elsd ; in Brittany the dead foster-brother carries his sister to the apple close of the Celtic paradise (Barzaz Breiz). Only in Brittany do the sad-hearted people think of the land of death as an island of Avalon, with the eternal sunset lingering behind the flowering apple trees, and gleaming on the fountain of forgetfulness. In Scotland the channering worm doth chide even the souls that come from where, &quot; beside the gate of Paradise, the birk grows fair enough.&quot; The Romaic idea of the place of the dead, the garden of Charon, whence &quot; neither in spring or summer, nor when grapes are gleaned in autumn, can warrior or maiden escape,&quot; is likewise pre- Christian. In ProvenQal, Danish, and Yorkshire folk-song, the cries of children ill-treated by a cruel step-mother awaken the departed mother,— {{ti|5em|&quot; Twas cold at night and the bainrtes grat, The mother below the mouls heard that.&quot;}} She reappears in her old home, and henceforth, &quot;when dogs howl in the night, the step-mother trembles, and is kind to the children.&quot; To this identity of superstition we may add the less tangible fact of identity of tone. The ballads of Klephtic exploits in Greece match the Border songs of Dick of the Law and Kinmont Willie. The same simple delight of living animates the short Greek Scholia and their counterparts in France. Everywhere in these happier climes, as in Southern Italy, there are snatches of popular verse that make but one song of rose trees, and apple blossom, and the nightingale that sings for maidens loverless,— {{ti|7em|&quot; II ne chante pas pour moi, Je n ai un, Dieu merci,&quot;}} says the gay French refrain. {{div end}} It would not be difficult to multiply instances of resem blance between the different folk-songs of Europe; but enough has, perhaps, been said to support the position that they are popular and primitive in the same sense as {{abbr|{{lang|de|Märchen}}|German: fairy tales}}. They date from times, and are composed by  {{div end}}{{div col end}}