[621]. All early accounts of dances among savages, South Sea islanders, and the like, assert this priority of chorus over refrain. There are no spectators, no audience, or “public”; all sing and all dance. See Wallaschek in his first chapter, and Yrjö Hirn, Förstudier till en Konstfilosofi, Helsingfors, 1896, p. 148.
[622]. Zell, Ferienschriften, II. 111 f., notes that this sort of repetition is found in old Etruscan prayers as well as in the liturgy of the Roman church.
[623]. By Wordsworth, work quoted; see, too, F. D. Allen, Remnants of Early Latin, p. 74, with interesting remarks on the fragments of the Carmina Saliaria, the axamenta.
[624]. Kögel, Gesch. d. d. Lit., I. 31, 34 f., points out the close resemblance of the conditions and circumstances of this hymn with those of the old German hymns, of which we have no example; he therefore infers for the latter the same repeated cries to the god, and finds confirmation for this inference in the dancing, the repetitions and the cries of a Gothic Christmas play, written in Latin, in Greek characters, but with a Gothic original peeping through. Müller’s attempt to restore this Latin-Gothic hymn is highly interesting.
[625]. Westphal, Allgem. Metrik, p. 37.
[626]. Also dramatic poetry, as in Job; for example, the refrain in the speeches of the messengers who tell Job of his calamity, “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” See Moulton’s arrangement in his edition of Job, pp. 10 f.
[627]. For these refrains see Driver, Introd. to the Lit. of the Old Test., p. 366 (original ed., p. 344). They are sometimes exactly repeated, sometimes varied. For the poetry due to the Hebrews in general, see Renan, Mélanges, p. 12.
[628]. 2 Sam. vi, 14 f.
[629]. Lowth, de sacra Poesi Hebr., ed. Rosenmüller, p. 205, citing “Nehem. xii, 24, 31, 38, 40, et titulum Ps. lxxxviii.” D. H. Müller, Die Propheten in ihrer ursprünglichen Form, Vienna, 1896, I. 246 f.,—a somewhat discredited work with regard to the theory of Hellenic and Hebrew relations, but seemingly sound in these facts. Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile, pp. 97, 100. The “prophets” who came to England from the Cevennes make another modern instance; and there are many more in the great development of religious enthusiasm in the seventeenth century.
[630]. Exod. xv. 1. 20 f. Clearly the whole tribe: see above, p. [186].