Note 448 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY

See “Hans Michel,” and the notes to it in Reifferscheid, Westjälische Volkslieder, pp. 47, 175. The song “Drüben auf grüner Haid,” pp. 51, 176, is used in the spinning-room, old home of communal minstrelsy, to stir the women to their work. Further, see Coussemaker, Chants Pop. des Flamands de France, p. 129, for a pious chanson: One is one, One is God alone, One is God alone, And that we believe. Two is two, Two Testaments, One God Alone ..., etc. Three is three, Three Patriarchs, Two Testaments ... and so on, up to the Twelve Apostles. Ibid., pp. 333, 336 ff., 353, are comic songs of the kind; and these are highly important, for they are songs of the dance, and still in vogue for communal processions. Their main features are repetition—and the refrain.