Note 744 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY (continued 3)

For example, the rain-song in Servia, an interesting ceremony, full of cries and with a refrain sung by dancing maidens. The dodola, a girl otherwise naked, but entirely covered with grass, weeds, and flowers, goes with a retinue of maidens from house to house; before each house the girls form a dancing ring with the dodola in the middle. The woman of the house pours water over the dodola, while she dances and turns about; the other maidens now sing the song for rain, each line ending with the refrain, oj dodo oj dodo le! See Grimm, Mythologie⁴, p. 494. Similar customs prevail in Greece; the song is here full of repetitions. See Grimm, Kl. Schr., II. 447. In the Athenæum, No. 2857 (1882), G. L. Gomme has some interesting notes on a survival of these processional rites.