[638]. A notable exception is K. O. Müller, who studied early Greek song in connection with early Greek life, an example—as Posnett notes in some excellent remarks, Compar. Lit., p. 104—which subsequent historians have neglected to their own harm.
[639]. Smythe, Melic Poets, p. 490.
[640]. For reference to the older literature of this subject, see Blankenburg, Litterar. Zusätze, I. 235 ff.
[641]. Déor’s song, of course, is divided into strophes or stanzas by means of this refrain.
[642]. See above, p. [86], on the dispute between Sievers and Möller, and their agreement regarding this change from song to recitation.
[643]. Altgerm. Poesie, pp. 341, 345.
[644]. De Antiquissima Germanorum Poesi Chorica ... Kiel, 1847. “Antiquissimum enim omnium poesis genus haud dubie illud est, quod choricum dicitur.” See p. 5: “Carmina vero haec sacra ... ex communi populorum usu, non a rhapsodis recitata neque a singulis, sed semper a choro sive pluribus simul et cantata et acta sunt.”
[645]. The best recent summary is that of Kögel in the first volume of his Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur.
[646]. See p. 6 of Müllenhoff: “Actionum autem choricarum triplex est genus: pompa, saltatio, ludus; quorum et simplicissimum est pompa et quasi primitivum.” He treats only the first of these three; but a valuable paper on the sword-dance (“Ueber den Schwerttanz,” in the Festgabe für G. Homeyer, 1871), the essay De Carmine Wessofontano, and many hints in his introduction to the Sagen, Märchen u. Lieder d. Herzogth. Schleswig-Holstein u. Lauenburg, 1845, make up the omission.
[647]. Kögel, work quoted, p. 18. See his references, p. 17, for these refrains and songs of war.