). If a line ends with two spondees it is a spondaic hexameter.
From this it would seem that while the pitch of the chant would be very difficult to gauge, owing to the diversity of opinion as to how to measure in actual sounds the effect of emotions upon the human voice, at least the rhythm of the chants would be well defined, owing to the hexameter in which the latter were written. Here again, however, we are cast adrift by theory, for in practice nothing could be more misleading than such a deduction. For instance, the following lines from Longfellow's “Evangeline” are both in this metre, although the rhythm of one differs greatly from that of the other.
Wearing her Norman cap, and her kirtle of blue, and the earrings
and
Shielding the house from storms, on the north were the barns and the farm-yard.
Now if we think that these lines can be sung to the same musical rhythm we are very far from the truth, although both are hexameters, namely,
