Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/38

xxxii xxxii INTRODUCTION. The language of primitive or simple passion is iteration, not figure ; and the ballads, poor in figures, are full of iteration. In fact, the chief mark of ballad style, as it is found in such survivals as are given in the present collec- tion, is a sort of progressive iteration. The question is repeated with the answer ; each increment in a series of related facts has a stanza for itself, identical, save for the new fact, with the other stanzas ; * and in every way a note of iteration dominates the style of our ballads. From any list of ballads which agree with these condi- tions, and spring from the community, it would seem that we ought to exclude the ballad of satire and abuse. It appears at first sight to be hedged about with a singular and personal depravity. We even find evidence of a laureate in this art ; for Kluge suggests that our old Eng- lish word for poet is really the same thing as " scoffer." ^ Every Icelander was expected to hold his own in these encounters, and Gunnlaug Snake-Tongue got the nick- name by dexterity in the composition of satiric verses ; often such a stanza of sarcasm was cut on a prominent rock, like our modern advertisements. All this, it is true, smacks of the artist ; but we find more general satire. We think of those songs which Goethe's Gretchen dreaded, or Shakspere's Helena invited if she should attempt to cure the king and fail. We think of the legions making a ballad about Caesar, or of Roland and his dread lest he and his men should be held up to ridi- cule in song.^ The church had much trouble with these 1 Out of a host of examples we may instance the ballad of " Kemp Ow)nie." ^ Scop. See Kluge in Englische Studien, VIII, 480 ff . ; and Miillenhoff on the gloss scofleod, in Haupt*s Zst.^ IX, 128. We can- not here discuss the " flyting." 8 Chanson de Roland^ 1008 ff. To serve the king, says Roland, one must endure heat and cold, perils of every kind, " so that no Digitized by LjOOQIC