Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/102

xcvi INTRODUCTION. such a point of view it is nebulous; but while one is inclined under any circumstances to reject it in its bare and dogmatic form, there is a measure of truth in it if one renounces all notion of modern authorship. "Let one fancy," says ten Brink, "an epoch where the same culture, the same sentiment, the same expressions, are property of a whole community ... an epoch where a poem comes to the ears of the listener in the very moment which gives it form, and, treasured in memory, does not live again until it is again delivered by the voice. Fancy a poetry oscillating perpetually between reminiscence and improvisation y'^ If this is true of an age dominated largely by the minstrel, what shall be said for prehistoric times? The singer is agent at once of preservation and of destruction, for he rescues specimens of a type which his incipient artistry is bound to destroy. Hence the absurdity of trying to discover in any published ballad the absolutely impersonal quality of poetry of the people. Successive triumphs of culture involved a series of steps by which the artist came into prominence and was made welcome by a public; as his note grows more insistent, less and less importance attaches to the communal elements of poetry, — singing, dancing, refrain and improvisation.^ Reverse this course of development; singing and dancing become obligatory, the scope of the refrain widens more and more, improvisation, varying "^ Beowulf f p. 105 f. See also pp. 3, 27, 29, 43, 189, 191, 243. Compared with ten Brink's solidity of argument, Scherer*s air of profound hinting and the medley of Darwin, Australians, newspapers, and theatre, — brought forth in his Poetik to prove primitive author- ship nothing else than our own authorship, — seem almost flippant. 2 WidsflS, " the Far-wanderer," a blurred, uncertain, dateless figure, without stay in any time or land, a mere preserver of communal makings, may go for the old type of singer; breezy, confidential D^or, first singer of English lyric, may head the modern list. The two stand like sentries at the gates of English song. Digitized by LjOOQIC