88 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



couata using a great deal of dramatic action in their songs, and I par- 

 ticularly noticed one of them who danced and sang a couple of waggish 

 variants of MaJbronche. The refrain is the chief connecting link between 

 the ballad and the simpler forms, and was often danced to after the ballad 

 itself had lost its appropriate action. Eefrains are found in every possible 

 form, sometimes rising to the importance of a Greek chorus and some- 

 times represented only by a musical accompaniment hummed in the bass 

 •during the singing of the solo. This peculiar running accompaniment is 

 common in the folksongs of the most diverse peoples ; and I remember 

 a chance illustration of its wide ditiusion which may be worth mention- 

 ing. At the Quebec Carnival Concert of 1894, as, on hearing the hummed 

 accompaniment of a well-known Canadian folksong, I was turning to 

 remark the likeness to the bass accompaniments I had heard hummed by 

 :i Zulu choir, I found that my neighbour was turning to tell me how 

 much the same thing reminded her of the songs she had heard sung all 

 over Italy. 



The refrain is one of the most distinctive marks of the ballad-form, 

 and when we tind songs like 



Voici le temps et la saison,-* 

 or 



Je me suis mis au rang d'aimer,-*" 



without any, we may generally class them with ballads, because they 

 would bear the addition of one without an}^ incongruity. But a 

 refrain in itself is not enough to make a ballad, and its presence in even 

 the earliest verse cannot be cited as proof of a popular origin ; as a matter 

 of fact, it is curious to observe in this connection, that the oldest refrain 

 knoAvn in English poetry occurs in the Lament of Deor, which is not a 

 folksong at all, but an Anglo-Saxon lyric written twelve hundred years 

 ago.^"* 



In its metre the Canadian ballad as a rule conforms to the fourteen- 

 syllabled type, which Nature seems to have set up as a master-model for 

 most peoples to follow. On this point Mr. Gagnon remarks : ^'^ " La 

 longueur du vers populaire est souvent de quatorze syllabes ou même 

 davantage. Chaque fois alors que la rime est masculine — car les rimes 

 parfaites s'y rencontrent quelque fois — la césure est invariablement 

 féminine, ou. plus exactement, sourde. Conformément à l'usage, ces 

 sortes de vers ont été, dans ce recueil, brisés à la césure ; ainsi les deux 



vers : 



Par derrière chez mon père — lui ya-t-un bois Joli ; 

 Le rossignol y chante— et le jour et la nuit, 



ont été écrits sur quatre lignes : 



Par derrièr' chez mon père 

 Lui ya-t-un bois joli ; 

 Le rossignol y chante 

 Et le jour et la nuit." 



