Note 434 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY

The incremental repetition of this ballad could be matched by many other cases. Typical is the combination of simple and incremental repetition, also in triads, at the end of a French ballad, “Sur le Bord de l’Ile,” Crane, Chansons Populaires, p. 28. Typical, too, is the interesting Westphalian ballad, already noted, of the Hero and Leander story: Reifferscheid, Westf. Volksl., pp. 2 f.; see ibid., Nos. 2, 5. “Mother, my eyes hurt me,—may I walk by the sea?”—“Not alone; take thy youngest brother.” Reasons follow against and for this. Then repetition: my eyes hurt me, may I not walk, etc. “Take thy youngest sister,”—and incremental repetition of the reasons. Then:—

“O mother,” said she, “mother,

My heart is sore in me;

Let others go to the churches,—

I will pray by the murmuring sea.”

Usually each increment has a stanza, but now and then compression takes place, as in Motherwell’s version of Sir Hugh:—

She wiled him into ae chamber,

She wiled him into twa,

She wiled him into the third chamber,

And that was warst o’t a’ ...

And first came out the thick, thick blood,

And syne came out the thin,

And syne came out the bonnie heart’s blood ...

So with three horses, and what not. This triad is not necessarily sprung from the “Dreitheiligkeit in der Lyrik,” of which Veit Valentin discourses in the Zeitschr. f. vgl. Lit. (New Series) II. 9 ff. “Dreitheiligkeit in der Lyrik,” comes rather from communal iteration in primitive song and dance.