Note 1152 — Chapter VIII · THE TRIUMPH OF THE ARTIST

Along with Perfetti’s moribund art of individual improvisation dies as well the improvised flyting, even in its more complicated and artistic phases. Through sundry references made above (pp. 208, note, 325, 416 f.) in regard to the interlaced stanzas of ballad and song. I have come into a bit of unintentional and quite explicable confusion. These serranas were called artificial, and yet were cited in the proof of communal origins. Artistic and even artificial these serranas undoubtedly become; and yet so does the refrain. They are very common; as Professor Lang points out in his Liederbuch des Königs Denis von Portugal, Halle, 1894, pp. xlvii, lxiii, they make “die Norm des altportugiesischen Kunstgedichtes,” and are found alike in songs of love and in the various kinds of flyting. Here, in the public song-duel, one crosses into communal territory; and the serranas go back to that rivalry of variation based upon a refrain or a repeated traditional verse.