Dedicatory Epistle addressed to Hobhouse Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth Notes to The Prisoner of Chillon INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF POETRY ANTHROPOLOGY tells us that poetry, music, the drama, and dancing grew up together and were originally one art. Savages all the world over have been accustomed after the day's work to meet around the camp-fire for social intercourse. There the rhythm of the rude dance awakened their emotions and they sought to communicate even when language was so imperfect that they could not understand one another unless speech was supplemented by gesture, signs, and acting. While the entire company kept time to the tom-tom, or to a single syllable endlessly repeated, a great hunter perhaps rushed in frenzy from the shadows and half sung, half acted, the story of the day's exploits. "I saw a deer. He did not see me." And in word and act, keeping perfect time to the rhythm of the dance, he crept towards the supposed deer, threw his lance, and rushed forward. When in this manner the events of the day had been recounted, one by one the company took up important past exploits that remained in their memories. Perhaps several of the dancers helped to present the story of the bear that had been killed a week before. When the hurricane of a month before was undertaken, most of the dancers were able to take an active part, for through many repetitions both words and acting had become more or less conventionalized. The tribal battle of a year before was shouted as a chorus, for every savage was acquainted with the customary words. Such is the probable theory of the origin of the ballad. The word itself means dance song, for the savages often danced around the camp-fire to no music except the words of a crude song. Indeed, in Scotland, and even in America within the memory of people who died but a few years ago, men and women engaged in evening dances accompanied by no music except the rhythm of a ballad that they sang. No individual seemed to produce these songs. They came as the work of the community. They were better than any individual of those times could produce. They arose because the communal life stirred the emotions of men and came to song. Just as in the process of evolution certain plants and animals survived because they were the best fitted to cope with their environment, so in the growth of the ballad, those expressions and words were preserved which represented most adequately the proper thought and emotion. Thus while generations passed, the communal ballads developed and became better than any individual could have written. When the communities grew larger so that all could not gather around one camp-fire, and individual occupations appeared and culture advanced so that strangers were permitted to pass from village to village, minstrels arose who entertained circles of listeners by singing ballads which they collected wherever they could find them. Gradually the minstrels forgot the names of minor and remote heroes and ascribed the marvellous deeds recounted to some great national character just as to-day stories that are in keeping with Lincoln's personality are often erroneously ascribed to Lincoln, although the tales were, in fact, famous long before his time. Sometimes ballads that were originally separate were joined. In this way it has happened in the history of almost every race that a group of ballads relating to some great national hero has been woven together into an epic. Until minstrels deliberately revised ballads or joined together ballads after this manner, there were no individual poets. Probably a ballad in praise of a patron was the first poetry strictly original with one author. The Robin Hood Ballads that we know, or the ballads popular among the country folk in England a century or two ago, were, of course, very different in content from the ballads sung around the camp-fire by our savage ancestors. Yet the essence, the spirit, of each is the same. Primitive poetry, we have seen, is an emotional view of life rhythmically expressed. Such is all true poetry whether written to-day or written two hundred years ago or before the flood. Human life cannot be altered fundamentally, but the modes of living are continually changing. Poetry must adapt itself accordingly. The songs of the South Sea Islanders served adequately their needs, but they cannot serve ours. Poetry must accommodate itself to human thought and progress or it will fail to awaken the emotional response which is the source of its power. One would think that poetry would always arise natu |