[494]. The older wedding in Greece was of the same kind. See Iliad, XVIII. 491 ff.; K. O. Müller, Griech. Lit., p. 34. See too the burlesque at the end of Aristophanes’s Birds, and H. W. Smythe, Greek Melic Poets, p. cxx.
[495]. Hahn, Albanesische Studien, I. 144 ff.
[496]. See the whole section in Brand’s Antiquities under “Marriage Customs and Ceremonies.” The quotation is from The Christian State of Matrimony, 1543.
[497]. De antiquissima Germanorum poesi chorica, Kiel, 1847, pp. 23 f.—“carmina nuptialia, quorum varia erant nomina,” etc. See also Kögel, Geschichte der deutschen Lit., I. 44 f.
[498]. Kögel, pp. 44 f.
[499]. Chronik, ed. Dahlmann, I. 116 ff., 176. It is here that the good man breaks out in a lament for the “leffliche schone Gesenge” that have been lost. Bladé, Poesies Pop. d. l. Gascogne, I. xix ff., says the wedding songs are both traditional and improvised, taking the form of choral dialogues, where repetition is of course abundant.
[500]. “Das Volkslied Israels im Munde der Propheten,” in Preussische Jahrbücher LXXIII. (1893), 462.
[501]. Wetzstein, “Die syrische Dreschtafel,” in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, V. (1873), 288 ff. See p. 297.
[502]. The various German bridal songs printed by Firmenich, Germaniens Völkerstimmen, are mostly artificial things; and one which goes to a lively rhythm and is meant for a dance (I. 165) has fallen into mere barnyard filth.
[503]. Lucian, On Mourning, 12 f. “A speech senseless and ridiculous,” he says of the oration.