[365]. Jeanroy, Origines de la Poésie Lyrique en France, Paris, 1889, Part III., shows conclusively the origin of these songs in the public dance.
[366]. “Balade” of the twelfth century: Bartsch, Chrestomathie Provençale, p. 107. Alavia = “away from us, begone,” the procul este profani of the dancers. See also G. Paris, Origines de la Poésie Lyrique, etc., a review of Jeanroy, Paris, 1892, pp. 12 ff. The rimes in -ar running through this stanza and the rest, and certain touches of art, show the changes in record; but the refrain and the spirit of the piece are quite communal.
[367]. Quellien, Chansons et Danses des Bretons, Paris, 1889, p. 11, notes that one event is not likely to be treated both in the song and in the tale: “ce qui est tombé dans le domaine de la narrative prosaïque est par cela même exclu desormais de la chanson.” Communal song must seize present things; in the tales it was “once upon a time.”
[368]. Buckle, Hist. Civ. Engl., I. Chap. vi., calls ballads “the groundwork of all historical knowledge,” and says they are “all strictly true” at the start. The use of writing, he thinks, put an end to their value.
[369]. This traditional, narrative song is called ballad throughout the present book,—unfortunately an equivocal term. The terminology of the whole subject is notoriously bad, and “ballad” is no exception to the rule. See Old English Ballads, pp. xviii ff.; Blankenburg, Litterarische Zusätze u. s. w., I. 387 ff., under “Dichtkunst”; for modern “ballad,” Werner in the Anzeiger für deutsches Alterthum, XIV. 165 ff., 190 f., XV. 259; for German names, Erich Schmidt, Charakteristiken, pp. 199 ff.; on balada, Jeanroy, Origines, etc., p. 403, who shows the passage of the word from its meaning as a dance-song to the technical term for a fixed form of verse. In Corsica a ballata can be a lament (see below under vocero), and derives from the dance round a corpse: J. B. Marcaggi, Les Chants de la Mort, etc., Paris, 1898, p. 121, note on the caracolu, “a sort of pantomime danced about the corpse by the mourning women, with gestures of grief,” but now fallen out of use. Of course, the only point here is to separate the ballad from songs like Greensleeves, from journalism (for the so-called “ballad” under Elizabeth shows that her folk were as anxious to get into print, or to keep out of it, as we are in days of the newspaper), from occasional poetry, scurrilous rimes, hymns, and all the rest. “Sonnet” was a word that then not only meant any short poem, but occasionally made a little competition with “ballad”; several of the ballads in the Rawlinson Collection, Bodleian Library, are called “sonnet” either by title or in the text.
[370]. Work quoted, p. lxviii. Critics look at this narrative and treat it as the only element in the ballad; but at every turn they should remember that the original ballad was always property of a throng, was always sung, was always danced, and was never without a dominant refrain.
[371]. Even Kleinpaul, sarcastic enough against Grimm, implies this condition in his nine characteristics of popular poetry: Von der Volkspoesie, published anonymously, 1860, and as supplement to his Poetik, 1870. See p. 29.
[372]. Introduction to Rosa Warrens’s Schwedische Volkslieder, p. xix.
[373]. Ancient Danish Ballads, 1860, I. ix.
[374]. Altgermanische Poesie, p. 118. See also p. 52.