[411]. Wright and Halliwell, Reliquiae Antiquae, I. 248 f.
[412]. Sc. fine,—finish, end?
[413]. Zeitschrift f. Völkerpsych., V. 201. He notes a curious close found in many ballads.—
Danube! Danube!
Thou shalt sing no more.
[414]. The opening or close of Germanic epic is often of this “I” character. So the Hildebrand Lay, the Béowulf, the Nibelungenlied at its end. Later epic shows a poet in the case, who has his own wares to announce. See R. M. Meyer, Altgermanische Poesie, pp. 357 ff., and his references.
[415]. Steenstrup, work quoted, pp. 43, 28 f.
[416]. Often the reciter remarks that it is night; that he is tired, thirsty; let the hearers come again on the morrow and each one bring a coin with him,—and so on. See A. Tobler, Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsych., IV. 175, quoting from Huon de Bordeaux.
[417]. It was noted that the Botocudos had no legends, no song of the past. A narrative song in the legendary sense is unknown to primitive folk; what they sing is the event of the day, an improvised song of sentences almost contemporary with the facts, cadenced by the communal dance. The sense of time past is so slender even among North American Indians (Powell, First Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology to Smithsonian Inst., 1881, pp. 29 ff.), that while they admit that grass grows, they “stoutly deny that the forest pines and the great sequoias were not created as they are.” Now this primitive trait of poetry is preserved in communal ballads; and from this strictly communal class, long historical ballads, like those in German collections, should be excluded. Kögel, Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur, I. 111, notes that “the epic song ... is one of the later kinds of poetry.... It cannot even be regarded as belonging to the common Germanic stock.” But the communal narrative song is another matter.
[418]. “On American Aboriginal Poetry,” Proc. Numismat. and Antiquar. Soc. Philadelphia, 1887, p. 19.