But as maiden nevermore.
The third stanza simply puts “binding” for “handing.” Here is the incremental repetition along with the fixed refrain,—not a very difficult communal feat, by the way, and, as in all these cases, getting its rhythm from the work or the dance, its meaning from the event or deed in hand. So, too, when the bride goes away, she is again besung, and the events are occasion of the quite contemporary words; thus, as she is lifted upon the husband’s horse,-
She is seated, she has sobbed!
She has ridden away, she laughed![[456]]
The better known collections are full of these simple cumulative songs, which it would be superfluous to record. In Algeria women sing an endless song of the sort with fixed refrain and incremental stanza. A combination of the counting-out rime and the song of labour is found in many places, for example, a Gascon ballad[[457]] sung by women as they wash clothes and beat the linen in cadence; the feature of dropping a number with each new stanza reminds one of those Ten Little Indians of one’s youth:—
Nine are washing the lye,
Nine.
Nine are washing it,
Nine are rubbing it,
Pretty Marion in the shade,