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t subject, and noted that "Dr. Brown, in an attempt to sketch the origin of poetry--an attempt which attracted the attention of Bishop Percy in his remarks introductory to the _Reliques_--proposed more than one hundred years ago to discover the source of the combined dance, song, melody, and mimetic action of primitive compositions in the common festivals of clan life. The student of comparative literature will probably regard Dr. Brown's theory as a curious anticipation of the historical method in a study which, in spite of M. Taine's efforts, has made so little progress as yet. The clan ethic of inherited guilt and vicarious punishment has attracted considerable attention. But the clan poetry of the ancient Arabs and of the bard-clans, surviving in the Hebrew sons of Asaph or the Greek Homeridae, has not received that light from comparative inquiry which the closely connected problems of primitive music and metre would alone amply deserve."[144] Not much has been done since this was penned. Max Mueller had previously, in 1847, declared that the Rig Veda consisted of the clan songs of the Hindu people,[145] but the importance of such a conclusion has been entirely neglected. In the meantime evidence is accumulating that in Britain there are still preserved many examples of clan songs. Thus Lord Archibald Campbell has published, in the first volume of his _Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition_, some sixteen or seventeen sagas. Some of these are clan-traditions; and the editor notes as evidence of their antiquity the fact that none of them makes any mention of firearms. These clan-traditions all relate to feuds and vendettas; and in one case it is expressly recorded that the descendants of one of the foes of the clan, in their account of the incident narrated, "altered this tradition and reversed the main facts." This has been followed by a volume definitely devoted to "clan-traditions,"[146] while in the _Carmina Gadelica_ and many of the Highland incantations there are preserved specimens of ancient clan songs. The most interesting of the tribal songs is that preserved at the Hawick Common riding. The burgh officers form the van of a pageant which insensibly carries us back to ancient times, and in some verses sung on the occasion there is a refrain which has been known for ages as the slogan of H
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