Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/129

 civil servants in India have heard from the lips of wandering singers, and sometimes taken down in writing as specimens of primitive song-making. Such fragments, perhaps all extant fragments of Greek song, belong to days when the local life of the Greek tribes and cities had lost much of its early separateness; indeed, the development of Greek language as well as sympathy must have been largely fatal to the preservation of old local song. Even the specimens of early song just given cannot, therefore, be accepted as really carrying us back to the local origines of Greek poetry. Still we may gain from them some conception of such poetry. In the same way, there are ancient descriptions of these choral lyrics which may be accepted as truthful, and graphic pictures of early, though not the earliest, Greek song-makers. Two of these we shall now present as belonging respectively to the autonomous city, and to the sacred festival of leaguered clans meeting at the seat of their league-god's worship. Students of the Amphiktionic League need not be reminded of the prominent part played by such tribal federations in early Greek life, a part which at one time promised to be as prominent in the social life of Greece as the Berith or Sacred League ("The Covenant") in that of the Hebrews, or the Sacred Months in the early history of the Arab tribes.

§ 30. One of these descriptions brings before us the humenaios, or choral song of marriage, in the life of the old Greek city. The marriage festival is going on, and under the flashing lights of torches the bride is being conducted through the streets. "Then a loud humenaios arises; dancing youths were whirling round, while among them flutes and harps resounded; and the women, standing at their thresholds, one and all admired and wondered." like picture of the humenaios song