Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/130

 and dance is given in the Shield of Hercules, attributed to Hesiod. "Some bear the bride to the husband on the well-formed chariot; while a loud humenaios arises. Burning torches borne by boys cast from afar their lights; forward move the damsels beaming with beauty. Both are followed by joyful choruses. One chorus, of youths, sing to the clear sound of the pipe with tender mouths, and make the echoes to resound; the other, of damsels, dance to the notes of the harp." In this choral song of marriage in the early Greek city, the publicity of the festival and the communal sympathy of the citizens remind us that as yet the city dêmus is not far removed from the settled clan or village commune, and that the feelings of common kinship and connubium have not yet been altogether lost by the clans and tribes of the city. The epitaphios of Adonis is scarcely so far removed from the thrênos, or dirge of the clan, as is the marriage song-dance of the commune from the artificial marriage-songs of modern poetry, such as, for example, the Prothalamion of Spenser.

In the hymn to the Delian Apollo we have a glimpse of a Greek tribal league-festival, which reminds us of the Hebrew tribes going up to the place which Yahveh chose, or the Arab at the Fair of ʾOkâdh. No doubt this hymn as it has reached us, written in hexameter verse of thoroughly epic tone, is no true specimen of the old and sacred "chorlyrik" of Greece. But it may be accepted as an echo of those sacred chants which are known to have prevailed in the early worship of Greek communities, and a truly ancient picture of choral singers. The allusion, at the end of the lines here translated, to dramatic imitations of different languages or dialects shows that the religious hymn of the Greeks, like some