instance, SagAc being the daughter of Odin, we may rest a reasonable
confidence upon the theory that poetry, the world over, finds its
first utterance at the bidding of the religious instinct and in
connection with religious rites.

Yet the wild-eyed warriors, keeping time by a rude triumphal chant to
the dance about the watch-fire, were mentally as children, with keen
senses and eager imagination, but feeble reason, with fresh and
vigorous emotions, but without elaborate language for these emotions.
Swaying and shouting in rhythmic consent, they came slowly to the use
of ordered words and, even then, could but have repeated the same
phrases over and over. The burden--sometimes senseless to our modern
understanding--to be found in the present form of many of our ballads
may be the survival of a survival from those primitive iterations. The
"Blaw, blaw, blaw winds, blaw" of _The Elfin Knight_ is not, in this
instance, inappropriate to the theme, yet we can almost hear shrilling
through it a far cry from days when men called directly upon the
powers of nature. Such refrains as "Binnorie, O Binnorie," "Jennifer
gentle an' rosemaree," "Down, a down, a down, a down," have ancient
secrets in them, had we ears to hear.

One of the vexed questions of criticism regarding these refrains is
whether they were rendered in alternation with the narrative verses or
as a continuous under-song. Early observers of Indian dances have
noted that, while one leaping savage after another improvised a simple
strain or two, the whole dancing company kept up a guttural cadence of
"Heh, heh, heh!" or "Aw, aw, aw!" which served the office of musical
accompaniment. This choral iteration of rhythmic syllables, still
hinted in the refrain, but only hinted, is believed to be the original
element of poetry.