Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/128

 the chorus of young men reply—and the chorus of boys rejoin—So the women of Elis, Plutarch tells us, used to sing the ancient hymn—

But here we must be careful to draw a distinction between merely popular songs and the old communal poetry. Just as Simonides and Pindar represent that lyric which in the growing unity of Greek tribes and cities found an opportunity to rise above local idioms and local sympathies, just as in the Homeric epics we find a feeling of Greek unity in spite of local kings and tribal distinctions, so in the old choral songs we should expect strongly local feelings and a much weaker sense of common Greek kinship than is to be found either in the personal lyric or in the epic poetry. We cannot, therefore, hope for light on the character of the early Greek choral lyric from such fragments of popular songs as the address of the wandering minstrel to the potters (Kerameis), or the Eiresiône of children going from house to house, levying what they can, in autumn during Apollo's feast, preserved in the pseudo-Herodotean life of Homer. These are no more indications of clan poetry than the English street-ballad, or the Indian songs which