52 TUNES

Into the musical patterns of other countries there Is the less need
to inquire, since they are all more developed than those we have
been considering. The traditional song in France took on a new
lease of life in the mid-fifteenth century, and is highly lyrical. It Is
characterized by the use of nonsense refrains. Settings for distichs
(or divided long lines) seem to be earlier than those for quatrains;
but the quatrains certainly reach back to the same century. This
kind of folk-song extended into Italy, deeply affecting the song-
books of the early sixteenth century, and they are abundant in
Piedmont and Lombardy. The North Italian tunes are sometimes
more primitive in technique, and the style Is more narrative than
In France.1 In Scandinavia couplets tend to take on the form of
quatrains by inserting refrains between the lines, or by repeating
the last line and a half of the previous couplet; or they are quatrains
with a refrain at the close. These refrains are intelligible clauses,
though not necessarily related to the matter of the ballad. In
Germany the refrain is much rarer, but there is a tendency to echo
the last three or four syllables of a line. In Czechoslovakia there is
a certain disinclination for the refrain, and a cult of the triplet,
while the music often shows a long note marking the middle of the
phrase. So one may go on accumulating notes of this kind. If they
add nothing new, they help to confirm the divisions of European
balladry which we have already inferred from other evidence.
There is no such sporadic scattering of techniques as would be the
natural result, if the ballad was everywhere a product of the soil.
Simple as they are, ballads are an art form and have to be learned.

The tunes must also be scanned by literary students for such
light as they may throw on the diffusion of texts. The texts need
not have the same history as their tunes, since the latter are various
and are capable of migrating alone. When we compare the tunes
of related ballads, we are more often aware of difference than of
identity. None the less, there are cases in which words and tunes
have travelled together, and it may then happen that the tune con-

La Dama d'Arago. The first certainly and the third probably are French, the
second^ Provencal, and the fourth probably of Greek origin, but perhaps of
immediate Provencal provenience.

For instance, Donna Lombarda has a simple narrative setting (aj8), and a
more lyrical melody for quatrains, with the refrain thrice repeated (ojSojSoooO:

2 flats ^ U8 3 flats & U8

fbdtf.df.d/cb eddjc..eddlcr g(c.. <*)/«:./ a(a..e)/dc./ bis
-. t edb/cr/ ed%/crl **6£/../cr/ refrain.

The tunes are related as 543CsCBB to 5210.