? Do they turn, as _Maerchen_ do, on the same
incidents, repeat the same stories, employ the same machinery of talking
birds and beasts? Lastly, are any specimens of ballad literature capable of
being traced back to extreme antiquity? It appears that all these questions
may be answered in the affirmative; that the great age and universal
diffusion of the ballad may be proved; and that its birth, from the lips
and heart of the people, may be contrasted with the origin of an artistic
poetry in the demand of an aristocracy for a separate epic literature
destined to be its own possession, and to be the first development of a
poetry of personality,--a record of individual passions and emotions. After
bringing forward examples of the identity of features in European ballad
poetry, we shall proceed to show that the earlier genre of ballads with
refrain sprang from the same primitive custom of dance, accompanied by
improvised song, which still exists in Greece and Russia, and even in
valleys of the Pyrenees.

There can scarcely be a better guide in the examination of the _notes_ or
marks of popular poetry than the instructions which M. Ampere gave to the
committee appointed in 1852-1853 to search for the remains of ballads in
France. M. Ampere bade the collectors look for the following
characteristics:--"The use of assonance in place of rhyme, the brusque
character of the recital, the textual repetition, as in Homer, of the
speeches of the persons, the constant use of certain numbers,--as three and
seven,--and the representation of the commonest objects of every-day life
as being made of gold and silver." M. Ampere might have added that French
ballads would probably employ a "bird chorus," the use of talking-birds as
messengers; that they would repeat the plots current in other countries,
and display the same non-Christian idea of death and of the future world
(see "The Lyke-wake Dirge"), the same ghostly superstitions and stories of
metamorphosis, and the same belief in elves and fairies, as are found in
the ballads of Greece, of Provence, of Brittany, Denmark and Scotland. We
shall now examine these supposed common notes of all genuine popular song,
supplying a few out of the many instances of curious identity. As to
brusqueness of recital, and the use of assonance instead of rhyme, as well
as the aid to memory given by reproducing speeches verbally, these are
almost unavoidable in all simple poetry preserved by oral tradition.