[807]. Ibid., p. 405. This chapter, where Jeanroy traces the growth of artificial forms, like the rondel and so on, out of purely popular refrain and verse, is of distinct value to the student of communal poetry. It completely refutes the claim of superficial criticism, common enough of late, that ballad and folksong are merely dregs of an older art, and that some pretty comparison, say a tramp in an old dress-coat, solves the communal problem. As jaunty and insufferable a piece of comment as can be found anywhere in print is Mr. Gregory Smith’s chapter on “The Problem of the Ballads and Popular Songs” in his Transition Period, pp. 180 ff.
[808]. See above, p. [174]. The refrain is very clearly an actual cry at the dance.
[809]. Quoted by Ritson, Anc. Songs³, p. xxxv.
[810]. Difference.
[811]. It is useless to pile up references; any collection has such refrains in plenty. This “springewir den reigen” (Carmina Burana, ed. Schmeller, p. 178), however, like Neidhart’s dance-songs, although it goes with the welcome to May, is conventional already and artistic.
[812]. Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, pp. 132 ff. “Another form of this game is only a kind of dance,” says the editor, without italics, “in which the girls first join hands in a circle and sing while moving round to the tune of Nancy Dawson:—
Here we go round the mulberry-bush,
and so on. Then:—
This is the way the ladies walk ...
This is the way they wash the clothes ...