Wie das Wort so wichtig dort war,
Weil es ein gesprochen Wort war;
although that other protest is right enough for one who has only modern poetry in view:—
Im Anfang war das Wort?...
Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmöglich schätzen.
For repetition as the main element in savage poetry it is useless to spread out evidence; no one denies the fact, and ethnology is full of it. From surviving incremental repetition, as in the Kalevala and in the ballads, one passes back, with the increment steadily diminishing, to outright and unrelieved iteration. The Africans have songs, some of them known as “national,” which consist of a single word, arranged in rude rhythmic groups, repeated for hours; and they get as much satisfaction from it as presumably those Ephesians got out of their own vehement and repeated cry. Lery and Lescarbot heard these songs of an iterated word. Lafitau[[598]] says that Father Marquette saw Indians dance the calumet dance, and was surprised “that the slave in singing said nothing but the single word Alleluia,”—of course an accidental coincidence of sounds,—“pronouncing the u after the Italian fashion, and dividing the word into two parts.” The iterated word in primitive song has its meaning somewhere, but often shades back into an inarticulate sound, and shades forward into a traditional and unintelligible cry, mere relief of emotion. Perhaps words of this sort went with the “detestable air” which Mary Shelley heard at the festas near her house in Italy.[[599]] The countryfolk, “like wild savages, ... in different bands, the sexes always separate, pass the whole night in dancing on the sands close to our door, running into the sea, then back again, all the time yelling one detestable air at the top of their voices,—the most detestable air in the world.” The favourite song of the Botocudos, their lyric mainstay, was just Kălăuīā ahā́, repeated indefinitely. The chorus of Indian war-songs, in North America, “consists for the most part of traditionary monosyllables which appear to admit often of transposition, and the utterance of which, at least, is so managed as to permit the words to be sung in strains to suit the music and dance.”[[600]] Dr. Brinton, in a summary of the characteristics of American aboriginal poetry,[[601]]—which was always sung,—noting that repetition is the groundwork, says that this element of iteration has two forms: a verse is sung repeatedly, which of course makes some statement, or there is a repeated refrain; but this refrain is wholly interjectional and meaningless. The Fuegians often sing not so much as a word, but only a syllable repeated forever. Progress is in the text, and by the individual; communal reminiscence is in the refrain: it is clear, then, that the refrain is the original “poem,” and to the refrain one must look for an idea of beginnings. A. W. Schlegel[[602]] conjectured that the earliest forms of lyric poetry were due to an “effort of the human heart to express a feeling or mood and to give it permanence by tone and rhythm,” this effort resulting at first “in simple words and interjections often repeated.” These are kept in the chorus or refrain; incremental repetition, as was shown above, works its way in the text. The chorus, to be sure, rises soon to the dignity of a coherent sentence; but its communal and retrograde force still is strong, and it insists on naked repetition, while individual singers cherish the increment. Miss Kingsley[[603]] heard the Bubis sing in chorus over and over for hours this verse and nothing more,—
The shark bites the Bubi’s hand.
A more advanced stage is seen in the cautious but distinct incremental repetition of a singer among the North American Indians; we quote from Schoolcraft:[[604]]—
Ningah peendegay aindahyaig:
We he heway ...[[605]]