Stab aus, stab aus,
Stecht dem Winter die Augen aus!
In the strife by deputy,[[765]] owl appearing for Hiems, and cuckoo for Ver, there is the call of the bird for refrain; or else it is holly for summer and ivy for winter, a chorus,[[766]] said to have been written down in Henry VI’s time, running—
Nay, Ivy, nay,
Hyt shal not be, iwys;
Let Holy hafe the maystry
As the maner ys.[[767]]
These flytings came to be extraordinarily popular, and it is hard to draw a line between the volkspoesie and the volksthümliche; learned allegory, which was early on the ground, has the mark of Cain upon it, and cannot be missed. Probably Böckel[[768]] is right in looking on the winter and summer songs as originally communal, with those dialogues between soul and body, which one finds in nearly every literature of Europe, as a learned and allegorical imitation; a combination of the two kinds is not unusual.[[769]] So one passes to all manner of debates,[[770]]—riches and poverty, wine and water, peasant and noble, priest and knight, down to Burns’s Twa Dogs; but it is the old communal sap that keeps holly and ivy green, and an old communal rite, the driving out of winter or of death, lingers in the verses which German children still sing to the dance:[[771]]—
Weir alle, weir alle, weir kumma raus,
Weir brenge enk’n Tod hinaus;