[613]. See lxi, lxii. The Hymen cry, taken from the Greek, was there a lending of communal wedding songs: see Smythe, Greek Melic Poets, p. 496. More artistic refrains are the
Currite ducentes subtegmina, currite, fusi,
of Catullus, lxiv. 323 ff., and the recurrent lines in Spenser’s Prothalamion and Epithalamium, which, of course, are on the same artistic plane with that marriage-song of Peleus and Thetis.
[614]. Walter Pater’s pleasant account of the making of this song (Marius the Epicurean, p. 73) is not improbable, in spirit at least; and it must be borne in mind that this was the metre of marching songs of Roman soldiers and other popular verse. See Du Meril, Poésies Populaires Latines, Paris, 1843, pp. 106-117, including the Pervigilium Veneris.
[615]. Bujeaud, “Refrains des Chansons Populaires,” in Le Courier Littéraire, 25 Mai, 1877, pp. 256 ff. For reference to this article, the present writer is indebted to Boynton’s dissertation, named and quoted below.
[616]. “Le Refrain dans la Littérature du Moyen Age,” in Revue des Traditions Populaires, III. 1 ff.; 82 ff.
[617]. J. Darmesteter, Chants Pop. des Afghans, Paris, 1888-1890, p. cxcvi, calls the strophe “abstraction faite du refrain,”—a more excellent way than these theorists take with their “little poem stuck in the cracks of a big poem,” and such clever nonsense.
[618]. “Der Kehrreim in der mhd. Dichtung,” Jahresber. d. Königl. Gymnas. zu Paderborn, 1890.
[619]. Neuhochdeutsche Metrik, p. 392. See R. M. Meyer, below.
[620]. Zeitschr. f. vergleich. Lit., I. 34 ff.; Euphorion, Zeitschr. f. Litteraturgesch., V. (1898), 1 ff. He points out that nobody heeded his view of the case, but that the works of Grosse, Groos, and Bücher all brought confirmation to it.