J’ai trouvé un Capitaine.
(Tir’ ton, tir’ ton, tir’ ton bas,
Tir’ ton joli bas de laine,
Car on le verra.)
Then, “il m’a appelé’ vilaine”; “je ne suis point si vilaine;” “le plus jeun’ fils du roi m’aime;” “il m’a donné pour étrenne”—“une bourse d’écus pleine,” “un bouquet de marjolaine;” “je l’ai planté dans la plaine;”—and, for good last, and with that touch of pathos common in these things, despite the gay tone, “s’il fleurit, je serai reine”; and so, with the refrain, an end. Full of communal elements, this song is nevertheless of an artistic type and of an aristocratic origin, an offshot of the pastourelle and its kin; popular enough, of a certain simplicity and beauty, it is not directly communal in its tone; it has gone among the people, and yet, though it was imitated from purely communal refrains, like other and older songs treated so successfully by Jeanroy, it has not come directly from the people. In fact, the communal refrain of the dance is seldom in such independent case as this infectious lilt; when it is not a survival, as in children’s games, its best chance for life is as parasite to a narrative ballad or even to a “lyric of sentiment and reflection,” as anthologies call them. Thus Ten Brink is undoubtedly right when he takes the refrain as old, traditional, communal, and the stanzas as new and artistic, in that pretty English lyric, Ichot a burde in boure bryht, which has the refrain at the beginning, as in many Provençal ballads:—
Blow, northern wind,
Send thou me my sweeting!
Blow, northern wind, blow, blow, blow!
Compare this with the artistic refrain of Alisoun, from which it differs so widely, and with the refrain of the Cuckoo Song, in its recorded form part of an elaborate composition, but doubtless taken from the “nature” refrain of a dance. The ballads and folksongs of Europe are of course in the transitional stage. They ought to be sung, but many of them may have been recited; they echo the cadence of a dancing throng, and have often timed the dance, though they are separable from such company. It must be borne in mind, however, that many ballads in which one would not now suspect such uses, were employed to regulate the slow steps of a dance. Narrative ballads were in great favour for the purpose; Faroe islanders danced to the stories of Sigurd, and the Russians, whose folksongs are always choral and without instrumental music, dance the khorovod to a narrative song,—in fact, the word means a blended song and dance; while even the Robin Hood ballads, if we may believe the Complaynt of Scotland, as well as some ballad of Johnny Armstrong, were sung at the dance of the shepherds. Savages sing narrative poems to the dance, and so do Melanesians.[[817]] One can therefore understand the statement made by Steenstrup,[[818]] that every genuine ballad has a refrain, though this may not be recorded; for the refrain is the tie which binds a ballad to its parent dance. As one retraces the path of the ballad, the refrain grows in importance, slowly pushing the leader or soloist nearer and nearer to the throng, until he is lost in it; and a repetition of cadenced choral cries becomes the main factor of poetry. As every one knows, those cadenced cries were regulated by the dance; and to this important factor in early poetry, already considered under the head of rhythm, we must now turn.
Dancing, most momentary of all the arts, as A. W. Schlegel called it, in Wagner’s words “the most real,” seeing that the whole man is concerned in it, “from head to foot,” with motions and gestures that give it tone, and rhythm that gives it speech,[[819]] was also the primitive and universal art, the sign of social consent; consenting steps, with mimicry of whatever sort, timed a series of rude cries which expressed the emotion of the moment, and so grew into articulate language. But the song detached itself from dancing long before dancing could shake off the choral cries and the refrain. Among Tasmanians and Australians songs already existed apart from the dance; but there was no dance without a song, and the dances were prevailingly of the whole horde or clan. Survivals of this primitive stage, and the early history of dancing in all quarters of the world, afford good warrant for the conclusion of Böhme;[[820]] “no dance without singing, and no song without a dance,” is his axiom for earliest times. Moreover, this proof of the connection of song and dance in the primitive horde, a bond which one or two writers have lately tried to sever, but without success, disposes of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s attempt[[821]] to explain the dance as a modification of the old movement of obeisance.