Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/89

Rh INTRODUCTION. Ixxxiii less in the way of refrain, chorus or burden by the crowd, until, finally, even this poor communal remnant was lost, and the ballad turned into a recited story in verse. The sometime leader is now a minstrel who composes stanzasf has a latent sense of literary responsibility and literary property, only to lose his occupation with the spread of printed books. Reverse the process, and this lea'der becomes a hazy impersonality, then vanishes in the throng. The individual withers as we retrace our steps in balladry, and the throng, with its refrain, is more and more.^ This refrain is the third and most important element for the question in hand. According to Ferdinand Wolf,^ the refrain is as old as any poetry of the people and occurs chiefly therein, arising from direct participation of the folk in songs at worship, feast, dance, game, or whatever other primitive ceremonies. Classical writers imitated the popular refrain ; ® and one is sure to find it wherever one touches the beginnings of vernacular poetry in Europe. From this purely popular source it passed not only into poetry of the schools, fairly rioting in such artificial forms as triolet or ballade, but also into the new ritual of the church.* If, then, as conservative writers 1 Take the process in little. Speaking of St. William of Orange, the chronicler {^Acta Sanctorum^ May 6, 8ii) exclaims : *^Qui chart juvenuMy qui conventus populorum . . . dulce non resonant et modulatis vocibus decantant, qualis et quantus f uerit . . . .5* " Later, Ordericus Vitalis says of the same hero : " Vulgo canitur a jocula- toribus de illo cantilena." (The quotations are taken from Nyrop, Den oldfranske Heltedigtning^ p. 15.) — Is not this the history of folksong ? ^ Lais, i8ff. Refrain carried from popular poetry into learned Latin poetry, pp. 23, 27. explain anything in older vernacular literature. But the early Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * Catullus, Ixi, bdi ; or the famous Pervigilium Veneris.
 * Church hymns are now a fine refuge for critics who wish to