Ali, ali, alo,—
and in solo, improvised then and there, a line such as,—
Il boit le vin et nous donn’ de l’eau,—
with another choral “ali, ali, alo.” In fact, when one comes to a certain class of peasant life, improvisation is as universal a “gift” as it is among the savages, and as it was by general consent of ethnologists[[1007]] among all primitive folk. For a glimpse at the past, Cædmon is evidently a case of improvisation—it was expected of the merest hind, one sees—lifted to literary performance. When Anglo-Saxon laws[[1008]] say a priest must not get drunk and “turn gleeman or ale-bard,” they mean that he is not to improvise convivial songs, and they have no reference to the professional minstrel; he is to resist a common temptation and refuse a traditional duty of every reveller, much like the duty of the Greek to make and sing his skolion at the banquet. So, again, it is inversion and perversion of the plain facts when one thinks of Welsh pennillion as scattered brands from the old Eistedfodd fire; it is the growth of a professional class of bards out of the general turn for improvising which is to explain the Eistedfodd, and it is the survival of old and universal habit when Welshmen even now sing one pennill after another in rapid alternation. Professor Schuchardt[[1009]] heard such a friendly contest not long ago, and was struck by the close resemblance of these quatrains to the German schnaderhüpfl and the improvised stanzas of Italy. Improvisation is the first step and not the last step in art; theories that the ballad is a belated bit of art taken up by countryfolk after the lords of letters have flung it aside,[[1010]] that songs of the people echo old opera tunes and concert ditties, and all easy little dicta of the sort, are confuted by a study of comparative literature both in the genetic and in the sociological phases of it. Peasants who make verse-combats their source of entertainment might be regarded as imitating a troubadour débat, if one did not consider how universal and primitive a custom this is known to be. Eskimo song-duels are not borrowed from the troubadours. Italian peasants might be said to derive their strambotti from amœbean verse like that of Vergil, were it not for the fact that Roman peasants loved and practised this sort of thing from the beginning. As Horace says, speaking of the old breed of Roman,[[1011]]—
/# Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit, libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos lusit amabiliter ... #/
a festal and communal affair. This rustic communal interchange of satire in improvised verses works up to the level of art not at first by aid of the poets, but by singers of note, men who began to take a pride in their special gift of improvisation, as will be shown in the following pages. Meanwhile a specimen of the verse-contest under partly communal conditions can be found in an Irish carmen amoebacum, as Mr. Hyde calls it, improvised alternately by a guest and his hostess. The latter has the hard end to carry, as she must finish the quatrain which the man begins; and no wonder she yields, especially as the Blarney Stone has evidently lent aid to her gallant visitor.[[1012]] It is clear, then, that idyll and eclogue in degeneration are not to explain the verse-combats whether of savages or even of peasants; the Roman and Oscan farmers improvised such songs in their satura and in their rough comedies, innocent of all literary influences; and the Italian peasant of to-day keeps up this custom wherever schoolmasters and other plagues of civilization bide afar off and leave him to his own communal devices. What Theocritus[[1013]] and Vergil did was to use these rude improvisations as suggestion or even foundation for their art.[[1014]] For rustic survivals these strambotti and the coplas of Spain, with other quatrains of the sort, made in and for the dance throughout the length and breadth of southern Europe,[[1015]] are less useful for purposes of study in primitive song than the schnaderhüpfl and the stev, one German, the other Scandinavian, of northern lands. As to the former, J. A. Schmeller’s brief account,[[1016]] made sixty years ago, is still authoritative, though much has been written about these quatrains since; most readable as well as most learned is the essay of Gustav Meyer.[[1017]] Collections and discussions[[1018]] are plentiful; and it is to be noted that the name of this sort of verse is not constant, being now disguised as “songlet,” “dancer,” and the like, and now as rundâ.[[1019]] Schmeller defines the schnaderhüpfl as “a short song consisting of one or two riming couplets, but in any case of four lines, which is sung to certain local and traditional dance-tunes, and is often improvised on the spot by the singer or dancer.” Singer and dancer, of course, is the primitive form, and this as hendiadys: “the singing dancer.” A typical quatrain of the sort, so far as this consideration goes, comes from Vogtland:—
I and my Hans,
We go to the dance;
And if no one will dance,
Dance I and my Hans.