[603]. Travels in West Africa, pp. 66 f.
[604]. V. 559 ff. “Original Words of Indian Songs literally translated.”
[605]. “Choral chant, four times repeated.” All Schoolcraft’s examples here are full of repetition.
[606]. Ibid., III. 328.
[607]. Ibid., V. 563 f. See below, p. [310].
[608]. See above on Rhythm. In addition to the references given there, see some sensible remarks in Emerson’s “Poetry and Imagination”; for scientific discussion of repetition as basis of rhythm, see Gurney, Power of Sound, pp. 455 f., and Masing, über Ursprung u. Verbreitung des Reims, pp. 9 f. J. Grimm pointed out that alliteration is really a form of repetition, Kl. Schr., VI. 161 f. Adam Smith, Essays, pp. 154 f., has some curious remarks on repetition as possible in music, but impossible in poetry.
[609]. W. von Biedermann, in two articles,—“Zur vergleichenden Geschichte der poetischen Formen,” Zeitschr. f. Vergl. Litteraturgesch., N. F., II. 415 ff.; IV. 224 ff., and “Die Wiederholung als Urform der Dichtung bei Goethe,” ibid., IV. 267 ff.,—traces the development of poetical style from this fundamental fact of repetition. First, simple words were repeated, then only part of the words in a sentence: such is the case in old Chinese, in Zend, in Accadian. Then came parallelism; then the repetition of similar sounds; and finally metre or rhythm (Versmass). Where were the dancing throngs in this interesting stretch of development, with rhythm as an afterclap of rime? As later in his review of Bücher’s Arbeit und Rhythmus, so here, Biedermann denies that rhythm came into poetry through music and the dance. He fails, however, to make good this assertion by any show of proof (see above, p. [75]); but his references are useful for the student of repetition. For another scheme of repetition in poetry, see R. M. Meyer, Altgermanische Poesie, pp. 12 f.
[610]. Hence the inadequate character of its treatment, say for Old Norse, by Vigfusson and Powell, Corp. Poet. Bor., I. 451 ff. R. M. Meyer, Altgerm. Poesie, p. 341, takes a more excellent way, but he lays too much stress on the ancient refrain, and not enough on the ancient choral and the primitive communal conditions of song. Much more to the point is the admirable though incomplete chapter on “Early Choral Song” in Posnett’s Comparative Literature: see especially pp. 127 ff.
[611]. Wolf, Lais, pp. 23 f. The refrain was insistent in all poetry of the troubadours and trouvères, and so leads back to refrains as the prevalent characteristic of all songs in the vernacular. See Wolf’s references, pp. 22 ff., and notes, pp. 184 ff. For a modern study of this development of artistic forms of the refrain, see the third chapter of the third part of Jeanroy’s excellent Origines de la Poésie Lyrique en France au Moyen Age, Paris, 1889.
[612]. Ebert, Lit. d. Mittelalters, II. 63 f., 64 note.