e less known variations of this theme, one may be
given from the German of an old song where male singers are supposed
to compete for a garland presented by the maidens; the rivals not only
sing for the prize but even answer riddles. It is a combination of
game and dance, and is evidently of communal origin. The honorable
authorities of Freiburg, about 1556, put this practice of "dancing of
evenings in the streets, and singing for a garland, and dancing in a
throng" under strictest ban. The following is a stanza of greeting in
such a song:--

Maiden, thee I fain would greet,
From thy head unto thy feet.
As many times I greet thee even
As there are stars in yonder heaven,
As there shall blossom flowers gay,
From Easter to St. Michael's day![9]

[9] Uhland, 'Volkslieder,' i. 12.

These competitive verses for the dance and the garland were, as we
shall presently see, spontaneous: composed in the throng by lad or
lassie, they are certainly entitled to the name of communal lyric.
Naturally, the greeting could ban as well as bless; and little Kirstin
(Christina) in the Danish ballad sends a greeting of double charge:--

To Denmark's King wish as oft good-night
As stars are shining in heaven bright;
To Denmark's Queen as oft bad year
As the linden hath leaves or the hind hath hair![10]

[10] Grundtvig, 'Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser,' iii. 161.

Folk-song in the primitive stage always had a refrain or chorus. The
invocation of spring, met in so many songs of later time, is doubtless
a survival of an older communal chorus sung to deities of summer and
flooding sunshine and fertility. The well-known Latin 'Pervigilium
Veneris,' artistic and elaborate as it is in eulogy of spring and
love, owes its refrain and the cadence of its trochaic rhythm to some
song of the Roman folk in festival; so that Walter Pater is not far
from the truth when he gracefully assumes that the whole poem was
suggested by this refrain "caught from the lips of the young men,
singing because they could not help it, in the streets of Pisa,"
during that Indian summer of paganism under the Antonines. This
haunting refrain, with its throb of the spring and the festal throng,
is ruthlessly tortured into a heroic couplet in Parnell's
translation:--

Let those love now who never loved before;
Let those who always loved now love the more!

Contrast the original!--

_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet!_