Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/66

lx Ix, INTRODUCTION. land for bread. ^ Nyrop tells us^ that by 1883 all Scandi- navian — or Danish?* — scholars had totally given up the theory that such poetry is the work of a whole people. He is very emphatic for the artist in all ballads. "Origi- nally there existed no popular singer who did not make some pretensions as poet,"* — and this even before the real epos had been developed. The Danish trumpet, we note, gives no uncertain sound ; and, indeed, the energetic writer might have calmed his fears for Germany by reading quite as rational and quite as decided a view of the matter in the pages of Bohme.* " It is not true," says Bohme, " that a whole people ever made songs "; and he goes on to give us, not a theory, but an actual example of the way in which poetry of the people was really made. He pro- duces from the Limburg Chronicle a certain leprous monk of the fourteenth century, who lived by the Rhine and made the best songs and dance-tunes in the world ; what he sang, runs the record, all the people loved to sing and whistle, and gleemen took up his songs and tunes, scatter- ing them about the land. "There," says Bohme, "we have the secret about the origins of popular poetry ; the oft admired and nebulous composition by a poetic multi- tude is mistake and nonsense. First of all, one man ^ Paul, GrundrisT d, gertnanischen Philologie^ I, 231 ; see, also, 1.73- 2 Den oldfranske Heltedigtningy p. 35, note. He is declaring that a single poet must have composed an epos like the Chanson de Roland. See, also, p. 287 f., where he insists on an author for the ballad, but allows that oral tradition, singing, destroys the trace of individuality. 8 He says : " Den, hos os i det mindste f uldstendig opgivne, tagede Teori "... He fears that in Germany they are coming back to the heresy. As strong condemnation, too, is in the little book of P. Friis : Udsigt over de danske Ktiempevisery etc.y Copenhagen, 1875 p. 7. ^ Altdeutsches Liederbuch, p. xxii. Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * Work quoted, p. 291.