The Beginnings of Poetry

by Francis Barton Gummere

[690]. In his edition of the play for Macmillan’s English Comedies.

[691]. The reapers now appear “with women in their hands.”

[692]. Described to the writer by a Japanese gentleman.

[693]. Bücher, p. 49.

[694]. Twelve centuries before Christ, Chinese women gathered plantain with a song that is particularly rich in repetition and refrain; Bücher quotes the translation of Strauss, of which a stanza runs thus:—

Pflücket, pflücket Wegerich,

Eija zu und pflücket ihn!

Pflücket, pflücket Wegerich,

Eija zu, ihr rücket ihn.

The whole song minutely follows the process of picking.