Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/94

lxxxviii Ixxxviii INTRODUCTION, may add that this impulse, in the guise of iteration, plays a leading part in modern poetry of grief, where, too, a measured and harmonious march of verse often testifies to an older stateliness of choral lamentation. The development of a funeral refrain out of these inarticu- late sounds of woe is not a hard matter. Emotional utterances, cries of grief, of rage or delight,^ meaningless at first, soon take on a meaning and form the basis of choral hymns which afterwards began and ended with these cries. In a way, they are the primitive text of the hymn ; later they are the refrain of it ; in any case, they are absolutely communal in origin.^ With regard to the meaning of the refrain, and speak- ing for English and Scottish ballads, we may note a considerable range. Often it is inarticulate, often a series of meaningless words. In "The Fair Flower of Northumberland,"^ however, the refrain runs very well with a story of escape and elopement across the border : Follow, my love, come over the strand. Probably, too, we import no alien sentiment when we note the touch of pathos and comment in the refrain of a traditional version of " Leesome Brand " : * 1 Peace to the barditus (Tacitus, Germania, c. 3), and German commentators : that way madness lies. Nor need sailors' chanteys be invoked : see Laura Alexandrine Smith, Music of the Wctters, London, 1888 ; and John Ashton, Real Sailor Songs, London, 1891, a sumptuous folio. ^ These considerations move Meyer to assume four stages of poetry: Primitive, Natural, The People, The Schools. — Scott's " Eleu Loro " in Marmion is an example of the inarticulate refrain revived. 8 Child, Ballads, I, ii3f. This is Version A. In B there is no doubt about the corresponding refrain : A mays love whiles is easy won. Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * Ibid., I, 184.