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VIII.—The Beginnings of Poetry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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Certain [Indian] societies require that each member have a special song; this song is generally of the man's own composition, although sometimes these songs are inherited from a father or a near relative who when living had been a member of the society. These individual songs are distinct from songs used in the ceremonies and regarded as the property of the society, although the members are entitled to sing them on certain occasions. When this society holds its formal meetings a part of the closing exercises consists of the simultaneous singing by all the members present of their individual songs. The result is most distressing to a listener, but there are no listeners unless by chance an outsider is present, for each singer is absorbed in voicing his own special song which is strictly his own personal affair, so that he pays no attention to his neighbour, consequently the pandemonium to which he contributes does not exist for him.
The foregoing paragraph from Miss Alice 0. Fletcher's account of Indian music reads like a travesty of the accepted view of primitive song, its character and authorship. There is the familiar primitive “horde,” engaged in festal singing, without onlookers. Yet instead of collaborative composition, improvisation, and communal ownership of the ensuing “ballad,” we have individual authorship and ownership, and individual singing. This is the testimony of a specialist who has spent many years among the people of whom she writes, studying and recording their songs and their modes of composition. Easily recognizable is the homogeneous primitive group, singing in festal ceremony; but this group does not conduct itself in the way which literary historians have insisted that we should expect.
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References
1 The Study of Indian Music. Reprinted from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. i, p. 233. 1915.
Compare a custom among the Karok, an Indian tribe of California (Stephen Powers, Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. iii, p. 29, Washington, 1877).
2 References of chief importance for the American Indians are Frederick R. Burton, American Primitive Music, with especial attention to the songs of the Ojibways, New York, 1909; Natalie Curtis, The Indian's Book, New York, 1900; and the following thorough studies: Frances Densmore, Chippewa Music, in Bulletins 45 (1910) and 53 (1913) of the Bureau of American Ethnology; Alice C. Fletcher, A Study of Omaha Indian Music, Papers of the Peabody Museum, vol. vii, No. 5, 1893, Indian Story and Song, Boston, 1900, The Hako: a Pawnee Ceremony, 22 Report (1904), Bureau of American Ethnology, and The Study of Indian Music quoted supra; James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion, 14 Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Part ii, 1896. Excellent pieces of work are “Hopi Songs” and “Zuñi Melodies,” by B. I. Gilman, published respectively in the Journal of American Ethnology and Archœology, vol. i, 1891 and vol. v, 1908, but nothing is said in these regarding the composition or presentation of the songs recorded.
Here also may be cited F. Boas, The Central Eskimo, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1884-1885, Songs and Dances of the Kwakiutl, etc., Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1888, Eskimo Tales and Songs, ibid., 1894; F. J. de Augusta, Zehn Araukaner Lieder, Anthropos, vi, 1911. Many references are cited later, especially books, studies, or special articles dealing with South American, African, and Australian tribes.
3 See F. B. Gummere, The Beginnings of Poetry, 1901, and The Popular Ballad, 1907.
4 Ibid.
5 The Modern Study of Literature, Chicago, 1915. From Chapter i, “The Elements of Literary Form.”
6 Ibid., pp. 18, 26.
7 The Beginnings of Poetry (1901), p. 139. Later, by Professor Gummere, are The Popular Ballad (1907), and the chapter on Ballads in the Cambridge History of English Literature (1908); but these deal primarily with the English and Scottish ballads, not with the origins of poetry.
8 P. 321
9 P. 106.
10 P. 212.
11 P. 13.
12 P. 93.
13 Pp. 80, 81. In Professor Gummere's article on “The Ballad and Communal Poetry,” Child Memorial volume (Harvard Studies and Notes, etc., 1896), he says: “Spontaneous composition in a dancing multitude—all singing, all dancing, and all able on occasion to improvise—is a fact of primitive poetry about which we may be as certain as such questions allow us to be certain. Behind individuals stands the human horde… . An insistent echo of this throng … greets us from the ballads.” He adds communal poetry to Wundt's (Ueber Ziele und Wege der Völkerpsychologie) three products of the communal mind,—speech, myth, and custom. “Universality of the poetic gift among inferior races, spontaneity or improvisation under communal conditions, the history of refrain and chorus, the early relation of narrative songs to the dance” [the italics are mine] are facts so well established that “it is no absurdity to insist on the origin of poetry under communal and not under artistic conditions.” More difficulty lies in “the assertion of simultaneous composition. Yet this difficulty is more apparent than real.”
Grosse, Anfänge der Kunst (1894), ch. ix, finds the poetry of primitive peoples to be egoistic in inspiration, and gives examples of lyrics of various types which point to this. “Im Allgemeinen trägt die Lyrik der Jägervölker einen durchaus egoistischen Charakter. Der Dichter besingt seine persönlichen Leiden und Freuden; das Schicksal seiner Mitmenschen entlockt ihm nur selten einen Ton.” For Professor Gummere's discussion and rejection of Grosse's view, see The Beginnings of Poetry, pp. 381 ff.
For a present-day German view of primitive poetry, see Erich Schmidt, “Die Anfänge der Literatur,” Die Kultur der Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1906, i, pp. 1-27. For a French view, see A. van Gennep, La Formation des Légendes, Paris, 1910, pp. 210-211.
14 üeber die Botocuden, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xix, pp. 30 ff. Quoted in The Beginnings of Poetry, p. 95. See note 40 infra.
15 Some references for the Akkas are G. Burrows, On the Natives of the Upper Welle District of the Belgian Congo, Journal of the Anthropological Institute (1889), xxviii; Sir H. James, Geographical Journal, xvii, p. 40, 1906; G. A. Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, N. Y., 1874, vol. ii; H. von Wissmann, Meine Zweite Durchquerung Aequatorial-Afrikas, Frankfort, 1890; H. M. Stanley, In Darkest Africa, N. Y., 1891; H. Schlichter, Pygmy Tribes of Africa, Scot. Geog. Mag., viii, etc.
16 According to the testimony of Miss Fletcher, in a letter to the present writer, there are many songs sung by Indian societies in which there is no dancing. Such songs are spoken of as “Rest Songs.” In the account quoted at the opening of this paper, of the simultaneous singing of individual songs by the members of a certain society as the closing act of a meeting, the members are sitting as they sing. Their individual songs are, in a sense, credentials of membership. Each song is strictly individual, and refers to a personal experience.
“In most societies,” says Miss Fletcher, “as well as in the ceremonies of the tribe, the songs are led by a choir, or by persons officially appointed as leaders. The members of the society frequently join in the song. I do not recall anyone performing a dramatic dance and singing at the same time. While all dances are accompanied by song, many songs are sung without dancing.
“Some of the dancing is not violent in action, the movement is merely rhythm and swaying. In such dances, the dancers sing as they move. Occasionally, as I recall, the song for a dance which is dramatic and vigorous, bringing all the body into play, will be sung by the choir (men and women seated about the drum). Some of the people sitting and watching the dance may clap their hands in rhythm with the drum. This, however, is playfulness by some privileged person and indicates enjoyment.”
17 Frances Densmore, Chippewa Music, i, ii. Bulletin 45 (1910) and 53 (1913), Bureau of American Ethnology. For examples see i, pp. 118 ff., ii, pp. 37 ff.
18 Ibid., i, p. 118.
19 Ibid., ii, p. 16. Compare also: “There is no limit to the number of these [ghost-dance songs] as every trance at every dance produces a new one, the trance subject after regaining consciousness embodying his experience in the spirit world in the form of a song, which is sung at the next dance and succeeding performance until superseded by other songs originating in the same way. Thus a single dance may easily result in twenty or thirty new songs” (James Mooney, The Ghost Dance Religion, 14 Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Part ii, 1896, p. 952). Many trance songs from many tribes are given pp. 953-1101.
For testimony from Australia, see A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, London, 1904. He says, p. 416, “In the tribes with which I have acquaintance, I find it to be a common belief that the songs, using that word in its widest meaning, as including all kinds of aboriginal poetry, are obtained by the bards from the spirits of the deceased, usually of their kindred, during sleep, in dreams… The Birraark professed to receive his poetic inspiration from the Mrarts, as well as the accompanying dances, which he was supposed to have seen first in ghost-land. … In the Narrang-ga tribe there are old men who profess to learn songs and dances from departed spirits. These men are called Gurildras… . In the Yuin tribe some men received their songs in dreams, others when waking.” Specimen songs follow.
20 An interesting seventeenth-century testimony is the following from LeJeune's Relation, 1636: “Let us begin with the feasts of the Savages. They have one for war. At this they sing and dance in turn, according to age; if the younger ones begin, the old men pity them for exposing themselves to the ridicule of the others. Each has his own song, that another dare not sing lest' he give offense. For this very reason they sometimes strike up a tune that belongs to their enemies to aggravate them.”—Jesuit Relations (Thwaites ed.), vol. ix, p. 111.
21 Chippewa Music, i, p. 2.
22 Ibid., i, p. 20.
23 Ibid., p. 119.
24 Burton, American Primitive Music, p. 118.
25 Alice C. Fletcher, The Indin in Story and Song, pp. 115-117.
26 Ibid., p. 22. The following passage from A Study of Omaha Indian Music, p. 25, by Alice C. Fletcher and Francis LaFlesche, also throws light on the composition of certain Indian songs:
Like the Poo-g′-thun, the Hae-thu-ska preserved the history of its members in its songs; when a brave deed was performed, the society decided whether it should be celebrated and without this dictate no man would dare permit a song to be composed in his honor. When a favorable decision was given, the task of composing the song devolved upon some man with musical talent. It has happened that the name of a man long dead has given place in a popular song to that of a modern warrior; this could only be done by the consent of the society, which was seldom given, as the Omahas were averse to letting the memory of a brave man die… . the songs were transmitted from one generation to another with care, as was also the story of the deeds the song commemorated.
27 The Hako, A Pawnee Ceremony, in 22nd Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, Part ii, p. 170. See also The Indian in Story and Song, p. 32.
28 The Mako, pp. 171-172. See also The Indian in Story and Song, p. 56.
See A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, London, 1904, for instances of individual artistry among the Australians. “The makers of Australian songs, or of the combined songs and dances, are the poets, or bards, of the tribe, and are held in great esteem. Their names are known in the neighboring tribes, and their songs are carried from tribe to tribe, until the very meaning of the words is lost, as well as the original source of the song. It is hard to say how far and how long such a song may travel in the course of time over the Australian continent,” p. 414. See also Kurburu's song, composed and sung by a bard called Kurburu, p. 420, etc. Howitt refers to one man who composed (see Umbara's songs, pp. 416, 423) when tossing about on the waves in a boat—not a very “communal” method of composition.
29 Chippewa Music, i, p. 126, No. 112: “Song of the Trees.”
30 Ibid., p. 135, No. 121: “I am afraid of the Owl.”
31 Ibid., p. 95, No. 79: “Healing Song.” Compare also Franz Boas on The Central Eskimo, Report Bureau of Ethnology, 1884-1885, p. 649: “Besides these old songs and tales there are a great number of new ones, and, indeed, almost every man has his own tune and his own song. A few of these become great favorites among the Eskimo and are sung like our popular songs.”
32 Fletcher, Indian Story and Song, Weton Song, pp. 81, 85.
So also in the Omaha tribe: “We′tonwaan is an old and untranslatable word used to designate a class of songs composed by women and sung exclusively by them.”—Fletcher and LaFlesche, The Omaha Tribe, 27th Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 421; cf. pp. 320-323 for other types of women's songs.
33 Chippewa Music, ii, p. 111, No. 31: “If I Had Been a Man.”
34 Ibid., p. 121, No. 39: Song of Dekum. Several other songs composed by Dekum are given.
35 Compare Franz Boas, Chinook Lays, p. 224, Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1888: “The greater part of those I have collected were composed by women.” He adds that for a great number of tunes the “text is only a meaningless burden.” For songs of the Kiowa composed by a woman, see J. W. Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Religion, 14 Report, Bureau of Ethnology, Part ii, 1896, pp. 1083, 1085, etc. See also an article of interest by Alexander F. Chamberlain, Primitive Woman as Poet, Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. xvi (1903), pp. 207 ff.
R. H. Codrington writes of the Melanesians (The Melanesians: Studies in Their Anthropology and Folk-Lore, Oxford, 1891, p. 334): “A poet or poetess more or less distinguished is probably found in every considerable village throughout the islands; when some remarkable event occurs, the launching of a canoe, a visit of strangers, or a feast, song-makers are engaged to celebrate it and rewarded,” etc.
36 Compare the testimony of Ramon Pane, concerning the Haytians, in Ferdinand Columbus's Life of Christopher Columbus, ch. 14: “They have all the superstitions reduced into old songs, and are directed by them, as the Moors by the Alcoran. When they sing these, they play on an instrument made of wood. … To that music they sing those songs they have got by heart. The chief men play on it, who learn it from their infancy, and so sing it according to their custom.”
Substantially the same account is given by Peter Martyr d'Anghrera (De Orbe Novo, English trans. by MacNutt, New York, 1912, vol. i, p. 172): “When the Spanish asked whoever had infected them with this mass of ridiculous beliefs, the natives replied that they received them from their ancestors, and that they had been preserved from time immemorial in poems which only the sons of chiefs were allowed to learn. These poems are learned by heart, for they have no writing, and on feast days the sons of chiefs sing them to the people in the form of sacred chants.”
For the North American Indians, see, for example, Washington Matthews, Navaho Legends, Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, 1897. An account of Navaho traditional songs is given pp. 23-27. See also note 273, p. 254, Navaho Music, by Prof. J. C. Fillmore. Miss Fletcher gives similar testimony concerning Indian traditional lays.
37 Improvisation exists among the Obongo, Australian, Fijiian, Andamanese, Zulu, Botocudo, and Eskimo tribes, as well as among the North American Indians. Traditional songs persist among the Kwai, Australian, Andamanese, Rock Vedda, Semang, Fijiian, Fuegian, and Eskimo tribes, as well as among the North American Indians.
38 See also citations in note 42.
39 J. E. Wood, Uncivilized Races of the World (Amer. ed., Hartford, 1870), p. 208.
40 We really know very little concerning the songs of the Botocudos. Dr. Ehrenreich's section dealing with them is very short, and he is chiefly interested in other things than song. These are the specimens he cites:—Gesang beim Tanz. Chor: “Weib jung, stehlen nichts.” Ein Weib singt: “Ich, ich will nicht (stehlen).” “Der Häuptling hat keine Furcht ”—Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, vol. xix, pp. 33, 61.
Testimony concerning the songs of other Brazilian tribes may be found in J. B. Steere's Narrative of a Visit to the Indian Tribes of the Purus River, Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1901, pp. 363-393. The following are songs of the Hypurinás (cannibals), and are individualistic in character: “The leaf that calls my lover when tied in my girdle” (Indian girl's song); “I have my arrows ready and wish to kill you ”; “Now no one can say I am not a warrior. I return victorious from the battle”; “I go to die, my enemy shall eat me.”
The following are some songs of the Paumari, a “humble cowardly people who live in deadly fear of the Hypurinás”: “My mother when I was little carried me with a strap on her back. But now I am a man I don't need my mother any more”; “The Toucan eats fruit in the edge of my garden, and after he eats he sings”; “The jaguar fought with me, and I am weary, I am weary.” The following they call the song of the turtle: “I wander, always wander, and when I get where I want to go I shall not stop, but still go on.”
Hunting songs of the Bakairí, of the Xingu river region, egoistic in character, are cited by Dr. Max Schmidt, Indianerstudien in Zentralbrasilien, Berlin, 1905, pp. 421-424.
The “I” of these songs of South American tribes cannot always be “racial.” The context shows that, sometimes, at least, it must be egoistic, as in the individualistic songs of the North American Indians.
41 In which sense, for example, does Professor G. P. Krapp (The Rise of English Literary Prose, 1915, Preface) use “ballad” when he writes, “Poetry of primitive origins, for example the ballad, often attains a finality of form which art cannot better, but not so with prose ?”
42 See Stewart Culin, Games of the North American Indian, 24 Report, Bureau of Ethnology, 1907, for an account of singing in the Moccasin or Hidden-Ball game, pp. 335 ff. Solo singing among the Chippewa is mentioned, p. 341, among the Menominee, p. 343, the Miami, p. 344, the Seneca, p. 350, the Wyandot, p. 351, etc. See also Edward Sapir, Song Recitative in Paiute Mythology, Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1910, p. 455, vol. xxiii: “Generally Indian music is of greatest significance when combined with the dance in ritualistic or ceremonial performances. Nevertheless the importance of music in non-ceremonial acts—for instance in the hand-game played by all the tribes west of the Rockies—should not be minimized.”
There are solo-singing Bantu, Zulu, Fuegian, etc., witch-doctors and medicine men, as well as solo-singing North American Indian medicine men and gamesters. See also, for some instances of solo singing, H. A. Junod, Les Chantes et les Contes des Ba-Ronga, pp. 39, 44, etc., Lausanne, 1897; also G. Landtman, The Poetry of the Kiwai Papuans, Folk-Lore, vol. xxiv (1913), p. 308; Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 275, 388, 396-399; James Cowan, The Maoris of New Zealand, pp. 218, 219; E. H. Gomes, Seventeen Years Among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo, pp. 225, 226, 228, as “The song of mourning is among some tribes sung by a professional wailer, generally a woman.”
43 The Study of Indian Music, 1915, pp. 231-232.
44 Indian Story and Song, pp. 121, 124, 125.
45 Burton, American Primitive Music, p. 106.
46 Ibid., p. 172.
47 Ibid., p. 173.
48 Frances Densmore, Chippewa Music, I, 1910, pp. 14, 15.
49 Ibid., ii, 1913, p. 2. Similarly Washington Matthews, Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1894, p. 185, writes of traditional songs among the Navahos, “One song consists almost exclusively of meaningless or archaic vocables. Yet not one syllable may be forgotten or misplaced.”
50 It is obvious to the student of negro songs that these songs tend to retrograde to the simple repetition of phrases rather than to assume a narrative type.
51 Erich Schmidt (“Anfänge der Literatur,” p. 9, in Kultur der Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1906, i) writes: … schon weil keine Masse nur den einfachsten Satz unisona improvisieren kann und alle romantischen Schwärmereien von der urheberlos singenden “Volksseele” eitel Dunst sind, muss sich Sondervortrag und Massenausbruch sehr früh gliedern. Einer schreit zuerst, einer singt und springt zuerst, die Menge macht es ihm nach, entweder treulich oder indem sie bei unartikulierten Refrains, bei einzelnen Worten, bei wiederkehrenden Sätzen beharrt.
In this connection, since it deserves to be cited somewhere, may be quoted a passage from von Humboldt: “The Indians pretend that when the araguatos [howling monkeys] fill the forests with their howling, there is always one that chaunts as leader of the chorus.”—A. von Humboldt, Travels in the Equinoctial Regions of America, Bohn edition, vol. ii, p. 70.
52 In the field of primitive ritual song there are many feats of memory that are quite wonderful. Long years are required for an Indian to become a really adept renderer of tribal rituals. See, for examples of verbal length, in the 27th Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, the ritual song of 39 lines on p. 42, or that of 50 lines on pp. 571-572, at the bottom very nobly poetic. Similar examples are to be found in other tribes. Also there is something remotely analogous to ballad structure in such ritual songs as are given on pp. 206-242 of The Hako. But these ritual songs are not improvisations; nor are they of “communal” rendering.
53 See my New-World Analogues of the English and Scottish Popular Ballads, the Mid-West Quarterly, April, 1916. Also The South western Cowboy Songs and the English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Modern Philology, October, 1913.
54 Joseph T. Miles, “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”
55 The Mid-West Quarterly, April, 1916, pp. 179-180.
56 Of “incremental repetition,” often emphasized as inherited from primitive poetry, and held to be the surest proof of the communal origin of the ballad type, Mr. John Robert Moore (The Influence of Transmission on the English Ballads, Modern Language Review, xi, 1916, p. 398) writes: “Unfortunately … the facts seem to make little provision for the theory; for it is the simple ballads which most often have the fixed refrain, and the broadsides which exhibit the most marked use of incremental repetition. Furthermore, when oral tradition adds a refrain to an original printed broadside, it is only a simple refrain, without the structural device of accretion which Professor Gummere considers so characteristic.” …