Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/81

Rh INTRODUCTION. Ixxv but the concerted work of a throng to entertain itself ; and this assertion, on the face of it not far from a petitio principiiy derives its best support from the connection of ballads with the dance. The dance, in early days, was inseparable from song ; out of its steps and windings came perhaps the fact and certainly the terms of metre.^ There is no doubt that one must look upon the dance as centre and, in a way, origin of all songs of the people.* " No dance without singing ^^ says Bohme, "««// no song without a dance; songs for the dance were the earliest of all songs, and melodies for the dance the oldest music of every race." ^ 1 Scherer, Geschichte d. deutschen Sprache^ p. 624. In many tongues, dance and song are convertible terms. Icelandic danz^ though a foreign word, is used very early in the sense of our " ballad," a song to which people dance : see Cleasby-Vigfusson, Dictionary, p. 96, with the classic passage. Our own words, like " ballad " itself, " carol," and others, help the etymological argument. — Religious and social questions cannot be considered here : see Livy, i, 20, on the Salian priests, or Miillenhoff {Festgabe /. G. Homeyer : iiber den Sckwerttanzy especially p. 117) on the instrumental accompani- ment of the Germanic sword-dance. One is inclined, though Moller explicitly opposes it, to assume a ballad of battle sung to this cadence of step and flashing sword. The Grimms {Deutsche Sagen, I, 210) promised a description of the later Hessian sword-dance " with the song of the dancers." See references (for later German literature) in Paul's Grundriss, II, i, 835. Scott (^ee Lockhart's Life, ed. 1837, III, 162 : Amer. ed., II, 130) refers to an account of the Shetland sword-dance, and speaks of "the lines, the rhymes, and the form of the dance." 2 " Mittelpunkt alles Volksgesanges " : Miillenhoff, Sagen, u. s. w., p. XXV. Bohme {Tanz, p. 13) thinks all lyric poetry, even, began in the dance. Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poisie Lyrique en France, p. 357 ff., gives ample material from Romance poetry in support of these views ; and he adds : " Dans ces fStes [dancing and singing] non seulement on chantait les chansons, mais on en composait" (P- 390)- Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * Altdeutsches Liederbuch, p. xxxv ; Geschichte d. Tanzes, p. 4.