Note 377 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY

A broader account of the origin of ballads is given by Comparetti, Kalewala, pp. 282 f. He refers them to the romantic and chivalric sentiment of the late Middle Ages—beginning, say, with the eleventh century—which passed from the “Romanic-Germanic centre of Europe” into various tongues, was delivered to oral tradition as popular verse, spread and flourished down to the sixteenth century, where it was collected as romancero, romanze, kæmpevise, ballad. But Comparetti neglects the communal conditions.