Note 769 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY (continued 3)

At a harvest-home at Selborne, 1836, Bell (pp. 46 ff.) heard two countrymen recite a “Dialogue between the Husbandman and the Servingman”; “it was delivered in a sort of chant or recitative,” though the rhythm is good for such doggerel; what suggests the older refrain is that the rime (second and fourth lines of each stanza) has to be either with “husbandman” or with “servingman” throughout. The odd lines have interior rime.