The Term: "Communal"
by Louise Pound
PMLA, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Jun., 1924), pp. 440-454
XX. THE TERM: "COMMUNAL"
I. THE DOCTRINE OF COMMUNAL ORIGINS
The period following the French Revolution was deeply interested in "the people" as a mass conception, in all that belonged to them and all that they created. It was in this period that theorists on the origin of law, customs, religion,
language, literature-particularly the folk-song and the folktale-
liked to advocate the doctrine of spontaneous, unconscious
growth "from the heart of the people," as the phrase went.
Such conceptions of origin had their critics from the first;
but they remained more or less orthodox throughout the nineteenth
century, and they still have foothold in both England
and America. They have, however, receded in the wake of
more reserved second-thoughts about human nature, along
with the recession of the "romantic" vehemence, and of the
Hegelian philosophy of the "over-soul," and of our own demagogic
admiration of the undifferentiated demos.
In law, for a first illustration, the theory of the German
jurist, Friedrich Karl von Savigny (1779-1861) remained entrenched
pretty much throughout the century. Savigny's
theory may be summarized in a few sentences:'
Yet we are not at all to think of it [the common la,w] as such in the sense
that the several individuals who compose the people have produced it by an
exercise of their will; for this will of the individuals might perhaps sometimes
bring forth the same law but might also, perhaps, and with more likelihood
bring forth very diverse laws. It is rather the spirit of the people [Volksgeist]
living and working in all individuals that gives rise to the positive law; which,
therefore is not a matter of chance for the consciousness of each individual but
is necessarily one and the same law for each . . . This feeling [of the internal
necessity which goes with the recognition of positive law] is expressed with
most positiveness in the ancient assertion of a divine origin for law or for
enactments; for one could not conceive of a more distinct denial that law originates
by chance or through human will.
In other words, law is something that grows by sheer power
of unfolding itself in men's miscegenated conscious states.
About 1878 R. von Ihering attacked this doctrine with his
theory of law as a conscious product of men seeking to achieve
System des h6utigen romischen Rechts (1840), I, ? 7.
440
THE TERM "COMMUNAL"
social ends, and Savigny's theory was gradually dropped in
continental Europe. By the end of the nineteenth century, it
was practically given up everywhere except in England and
America.
A further illustration may be drawn from the history of
theories concerning the origin and growth of language. Jacob
Grimm thought of language as something born from the soul of
primitive society. Savigny was Grimm's teacher, and as laws
were to Savigny, so language was to Grimm, unmistakably of
social emergence. His successors retained this view of language
as a social product, though they offered explanations of the
sources of human speech which were more concrete than
Grimm's. A distinction, deriving from Grimm's view, arose
between the "artificial" products of the individual and the
spontaneous creation of the people. Professor Paul was a
dissenter.2 He emphasized the part played by the individual,
and believed in an artistic rather than a social genesis for
language. In the main, however, language continued to be
viewed, as it was by the psychologist Wundt, as a product of
the communal mind. Characteristic is the position of an
American scholar, writing as late as 1891, in advocacy of "The
Festal Origins of Human Speech." The psychologist, he says3:
. . . can trace the root back to the rhythmic sounds that savages produce
when they beat sonorous bodies amid the play-excitement which originated
through communal elation of the success of communal action, and which had
become, at the earliest glimpse which we obtain of it, involved, like the oldest
and most sacred of the words it gave birth to, in the race's traditional custom
of festal celebration.
At the opposite extreme from these theories is the view of
Professor Otto Jespersen. He suggests in his recently published
Language (1922)4 that:
[The first utterances were] exclamative, not communicative-that is, they
came forth from an inner craving of the individual without any thought of any
fellow creatures. Our remote ancestors had not the slightest notion that such
a thing as communicating ideas and feelings to some one else was possible . ..
Although we now regard the communication of thought as the main object of
speaking, there is no reason for thinking that this has always been the case;
it is perfectly possible that speech has developed from something which had no
2 Principien der Sprachgeschichte (1886), ch. i.
3 J. Donovan, Mind, vol. VI, pp. 498-506.
4 See pp. 432-442. See also his earlier Progress in Language (1894).
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LOUISE POUND
other purpose than that of exercising the muscles of the mouth and throat and
of amusing oneself and others by the production of pleasant or possibly only
strange sounds.
The first utterances of speech he fancies to himself as
"something between the nightly love-lyrics of puss upon the
tiles and the melodious love songs of the nightingale," i.e., he
puts forward a doctrine which is neither "festal" nor "communal."
5 He also points out that to ensure the creation of a
speech which shall be a parent to a new language stock, all
that is needed is that two or more children should be placed by
themselves in a condition where they will be entirely or to a
large degree free from the presence or influence of their elders.6
Professor Jespersen goes back to individuals. He does not rely
upon the "mentally homogeneous throng," either for the origin
of human utterance or for the creation of new language stocks.7
6 Professor Jespersen is right, I think, in detaching primitive musical utterance
from inevitable association with the dance. Edward Sapir (Language,
1921, p. 244) repeats-rather unthinkingly, I believe-the old view that
"Poetry is everywhere inseparable in its origins from the singing voice and the
measure of the dance." Poetry and song are inseparable in origins; but primitive
musical utterance appears (like the songs of birds or of children) independent
of the dance, as well as associated with it, as far down in the cultural scale as
we can go.
6 Following the American ethnologist Hale, "The Origin of Language,"
in Transactions of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
vol. xxxv, 1886, etc. See Jespersen's Language, p. 181.
7 A parallel shift of theory may be seen in the fields of economics, anthro
pology, and sociology. For example, a belief prevailed, as advocated by Sir
Henry Maine, E. de Laveleye, and other scholars, that the existing institution
of private property is a direct descendant of a system of communal ownershipmuch
as Professor Gummere thought individual authorship and ownership of
song to be the direct descendant of communal authorship and ownership. A
late reflection of Maine's view may be found in The Evolution of Revolution,
by H. M. Hyndman (1921), who writes at the opening of his first chapter
("Primitive Communism"): "All authorities are agreed that, throughout the
earlier development of mankind, communism, without any private property
whatever in the means of creating wealth, prevailed as an economic and social
order" . . . "Private ownership in any shape which gave its possessor economic
or social -power over his fellows, was unknown." Hyndman speaks in his
introduction of "the most crucial revolution in the story of human growth"
. . . "This revolution was the transformation from collective or communal
property held by a portion of a tribe or gens, by the tribe itself, and ultimately
by a confederation of tribes, into private property held by the individual and
his family."
442
THE TERM "COMMUNAL"
Alongside the early nineteenth century conceptions of the
growth of law and language belongs Herder's collectivistic
conception of the origin of popular poetry, which his disciple,
F. A. Wolf, afterward applied to the Homeric poems. For
literature, too, communal inspiration was advocated. The
belief became orthodox that primitive peoples and other
mentally homogeneous groups created their songs in public, in
a sort of communal spontaneity. Just as for language, a
distinction was insisted upon between "art" poetry, coming
from the individual, and "folk poetry," arising from the people.
Among English dissenters, Joseph Jacobs remarked that there
is no such thing as the folk behind what one calls folk tales,
folk lore, popular ballads.8 William Wells Newell, founder and
first president of the American Folk-Lore Society was another
dissenter from the doctrine of folk-origins or folk creation.
But the view of these men did not become the accepted view.
"We search for poetry before the poet,"9 said a leading scholar.
"Poetry of the people is made by any given race through the
Some recent studies of the subject of primitive ownership appear to show
that the communistict heory is mythical,n ot only for privatep ropertyb ut for
the ownershipo f land. Completerin vestigationm akesc leart hat individualistic
ownership both preceded and followed common control and ownership. This
is the thesis of Jan St. Lewinski (The Origin of Property, Lectures delivered
at the London School of Economics, 1913) who maintains that individual
ownership was always the first form of property . . . "from a state of no
property, individual ownership generally originates once labor has been incorporated
in the soil" (p. 22). Pure nomads and hunting peoples have no
private property in land, but land is not common property among them.
It is merelya free good, to appropriatew hich is not worth the trouble. The
evidence of existing primitive peoples, says Lewinski, shows clearly that the
village community was not the primitive stage but was preceded by individual
appropriation. "Thus the principal pillars of the communistic theory are
alreadyd emolished!"h e writes (p. 30). Private propertyi n personale ffects,
like clothes, weapons, domestic animals (in songs, also, it might be added)
prevailse verywherei, t appears,e ven amongt he peoplesl owest in the cultural
scale, and it has probably existed from time immemorial. For a recent American
book, taking the same position as Lewinski's, see Robert H. Lowie, Primitive
Society (1920), chapter IX.
8 "Yet when we come to realize what we mean by saying a custom, a tale,
a myth, arose from the Folk, I fear we must come to the conclusion that the
said Folk is a fraud, a delusion, a myth.. . . The Folk is a name for our
ignorance." Folk Lore, iv, 234, June, 1893.
9 F. B. Gummere, "The Ballad and Communal Poetry," Harvard Studies
and Notes in Philology and Literature, V, 55.
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LOUISE POUND
same mysterious process which forms speech, cult, myth,
custom, or law."1'
At the present time, however, continental Europe, from which
the doctrine of communal inspiration emerged, has given it up.
Its strongest remaining foothold is in the United States, the
country into which the doctrine last entered.
The whole theory of a communal mind from which emerged
law and institutions and from which on festal occasions are
(or were) born language and literature rests upon the romantic
enterprise of sociologists, who thought to write a psychology of
men en masse apart from any sane reliance upon the analysis of
individual minds-very much as if one were to endeavor to cut
a physical robe for mankind as a whole with no thought of
individual arms and legs. This effort issued in the bizarre
belief in a collective soul which is not to be found in the nature of
the souls of the individuals which compose the social group, but
which in some mystic sense enwraps the individuals in its allobscuring
fog. Such a "communal mind" or "mob mind" or
"gesammtgeist," as you may choose to call it, has no actuality
which science or sense can observe. If history and indeed
ethnology betray clearly one fact it is that there is no such
"mental homogeneity" among men. As a critical hypothesis the
whole communal prepossession has led mainly into misconception
and misvaluation; its service (for service of a sort it is)
has been to arouse an interest and an industry in its support
which have only succeeded in demonstrating its futility. In
other words, it is honorably shelved by its own inability to
stand the test of substantial evidence.
But in this connection it ought to be in place to point out that
there is another and classical concept in criticism which might
well have its value restored. The consensus gentium, meaning
the critical agreement of instructed opinion, is an idea which in
law underlies all theories of government which proceed ex
communi consensu and in the arts is regarded by Aristotle and
Longinus as well as by the best of Renaissance critics as the
securest anchorage of valuations in matters of taste." It is
10 Old English Ballads, p. xxxvi. For a recent German view, taking the
contrary position concerning the genesis of folk-song, see Alfred G6tze, Vom
Deutschen Volkslied, 1921.
1 The argument from universal consent (consensus omniumn gentium) is
formulated by Aristotle at the very beginning of the Topics (i, 1): "As for
444
THE TERM "COMMUNAL"
needless to point out that such a conception is poles remote from
the romantic tolksgeist figment. Where the "mob soul" calls
for the play of unconsciousness, the classical consensus calls for
deliberate and trained conscious effort; where "communalism"
seeks formlessly to express feeling, the consensus judges (as
Rousseau has it) in the "calm of the passions";'2 and where the
probable truths, they are such as are admitted by all men, or by the generality
of men, or by wise men; and among these last either by all the wise, or by the
generality of the wise, or by such of the wise as are of the highest authority."
The argument, however, was especially adopted by the Stoics, whose literature
it pervades, and given Latin form by such Stoic writers as Cicero (cf. De
Natura Deorumni,. 17; ii. 2); and Tusculanae Disputationes i. 15: ("quod si omnium
consensus vox naturae est") and Seneca. Bacon, with the example of
excessive deference to the authority of Aristotle before him, remarks: "Verus
enim consensus is est, qui ex libertate judicii in idem conveniente consistit"
(Instauratio Magno, Pars II, Liber i, Aph. lxxvii). As used in criticism, the
evidence of the consensus of trained minds is regarded as especially valid as the
natural answer to the mediaeval maxim, de gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum;
and it is, in fact, the bulwark of any theory of sound criticism in art
and letters. Here again the foundation of the idea is in Aristotle,-both in the
Politics and the Poetics, especially Chapter XXVI of the latter work, where he
defines the higher art as in every case that which appeals to the better auditor, or
the cultivated spectator (OearTs rLEtKi); see, also, Butcher, Aristotle's Theory
of Poetry and Fine Art, Ch. IV). But the locus classicus of the idea, in this
critical sense, is without doubt Longinus, De Sublimitate vii, where he defines
the true test of elevation in letters as the judgment of a man of intelligence,
versed in letters: 'true beauty and sublimity please always and please all.'
Compare also Courthope, Life in Poetry, Law in Taste, I. Of course, in all this
the judicial rather than the creative mind is in regard; but can there be any
valuable creation without selective judgment? Can art, in other words, begin
without at least the impulse of conscious intention, as the mob-soul theories
imply that it does? Perhaps if the phrase "work of art" were refocussed in
critical thought, with right emphasis upon the work, we should have less vogue
of sociological puerilities and more respect for the classics of critical theory.
12 In the first version of the Contrat Social (Livre I, Chapitre II) Rousseau
says: "que la volonte generale soit dans chaque individu un acte pur de l'entendement
qui raisonne dans le silence des passions sur que l'homme peut
exiger de son semblable, et sur ce que son semblable en droit d'exiger de lui, nul
n'en disconviendra." In view of the fact that to no light degree upon Rousseau
has been fathered the whole chute of modern thought which has ended in the
mire of sociological mysticism, it is of no small interest to note how painstakingly
intellectualistic Rousseau intended to be. No doubt his "moi commun"
is in part at least the hapless progenitor of our modern Volksgeister, communal
selves, and mob souls; but when (De l'economie politique) he employed the
analogy of an animal body to define the functions of the body politic, and
likened the life of the whole to a "moi commun," he was actually on classical
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LOUISE POUND
primitivist seeks to replace human thought by dancing puppets
the critic of the tradition endeavors to single out, from the
midst of puppetdom, creative human intelligences. Obviously,
conscious effort, cool judgment, and creative intelligence are
gifts of men, not of mobs; and it was perhaps too much to
expect from a romantic century interest in these qualities.13
II. THE TERM "COMMUNAL" AND FOLK-SONG
Although the doctrine of communal inspiration played a
large role during the nineteenth century in theories of the
growth of law and language and of other human institutions, the
word "communal" itself was little used in many of these fields.
It came into the foreground chiefly in anthropology, sociology,
psychology, and literature.14 In American criticism, the term
ground and employing a Platonic figure. It is worth while, however, to point
to a very interestinga lterationo f phraseologyb etweent he first draft and the
final form of the key passage to the ContratS ocial which of itself appearst o
indicatet hat Rousseauh alf fearedt he very misinterpretationw hichh is phrase
has been given. He definest he termso f the theoreticalc ontract: "Chacund e
nous met en commun sa volonte, ses biens, sa force, at sa personne, sous la
direction de la volonte generale, et nous recevons tous en corps chaque membre
comme partie inalienable du tout." He then, in the first form, continues: "A
l'instant, au lieu de la personne particuliere de chaque contractant, cet acte
d'association produit un corps moral et collectif, compose d'autant de membres
que l'assemblee a de voix, et auquel le moi commun donne l'unite formelle, la
vie et la volonte." In the final version the last phrase is altered to "lequel
[corps moral et collectif] recoit de ce meme acte son unite, son moi commun, sa
vie et sa volonte." The subordination of the "moi commun" is obviously the
intention of the change. Of course Rousseau never dreamed of the "overindividual
ego" or of the "blind will" of a psychic underworld which were later
to miscolor critical judgment.
13 I am indebted for assistance in my examination of material from the fields
of law, sociology, and philosophy to my brother, Dean Roscoe Pound of the
Harvard Law School, to J. E. Le Rossignol, Professor of Economics at the
University of Nebraska, and especially to H. B. Alexander, Professor of Philosophy
at the University of Nebraska.
14 The word communal is as old as the Song of Roland (uit en sunt communel,
in the sense of tous y prennent part, 1. 475, cited by Littre). Later it usually
denotes what has to do with a commune. As a critical term in English it belongs
to the nineteenth century. Impetus was given to commune after the title was
assumed by Parisian political desperadoes during the Reign of Terror. The
word communal entered English through French influence, early in the century,
in the sense of pertaining to a commune. By the middle of the century it was in
use in the sense of pertaining to a community.
446
THE TERM i'COMMUNAL '
has its most frequent use in connection with discussions of
traditional ballads. Its currency has not derived from Professor
Child, who preferred "popular." Professor Child speaks
of "popular" ballads and "popular" origins. It was introduced
by Professor Francis B. Gummere1 in his edition of the Old
English Ballads (1894). When seeking for a differentiating
epithet for the English traditional ballads he writes:'6
As a mere makeshift, however, one might use the word "communal." A
communal ballad is a narrative ballad of tradition which represents a community
or folk, not a section or class of that community, and not a single writer.
If, after introducing the term, he had employed it always in
this sense, his usage would better bear examination. But he
soon went far beyond this original definition. He came to
employ the word not only for denoting what "represents" a
community and does not come from a single hand, but for
what a community as over against an individual has created, on
social occasions. He makes spontaneous communal creation,
not gradual re-creation by a succession of singers, a test of
origins. Folk-poetry originates communally, he affirms,
artistic poetry is created by individuals. His disciples have
continued his usage; and by our own time the term has become
pretty firmly entrenched in textbooks and literary histories.
Few American scholars write of folk poetry in these days withou t
relying upon the word.
The following are some conceptions associated with the
term "communal" which I think invalid. It seems probable to
me that they will eventually be given up in America, as they are
now abandoned in continental Europe.
1. It is no more a demonstrated fact that poetry had communal
origin than it is that language had such origin, or law, or
15 Behind his employment of "communal" lay German influence. He wished
to make for English a distinction similar to that afforded by Franz B6hme's
volksliedera nd volksthilmlichel ieder (Liederbuch,1 877). Gummere's "communal
mind" suggests Wundt's volksseele, or his gesammtgeist. He may also have had
in mind Steinthal's dichtender volksgeist, or Lachmann's gemeinsames dichten.
He comments on these terms at some length in the introduction to his Old
English Ballads, and in "The Ballad and Communal Poetry," in the Child
Memorial volume of Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature.
Otto Immisch (Die innere Entwicklung des griechischen Epos, 1904) coins the
name Gemeinschaftsdichtung.
1 Old English Ballads, p. xxvii.
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LOUISE POUND
that property was originally owned in common. Assumptions
like Professor Gummere's "The original ballad must have been
sung by all as it was danced by all,"'7 or "Poetry was a communal
product," are assumptions and nothing more. Investigation
of the song of primitive peoples shows that primitive
song is not always danced; that primitive lyrics are not narrative
and hence should be termed songs not ballads; and that they
are not necessarily nor even preponderatingly of social inspiration.
Communal inspiration should no longer be over-insisted
upon for primitive song. Songs composed by individuals and
songs sung by groups of singers are found among the most
primitive of living races. The conception of individual song
can be shown to exist among the very lowest peoples. That in
the earliest stage there was group utterance merely, arising
from the folk-dance, and that individual composition came
later is fanciful hypothesis. The communal authorship and
ownership of primitive poetry as over against culture poetry is
largely a myth.l8 "Communal" inspiration of poetry is true in
the same sense in primitive as in civilized communities and
only in the same sense.19
2. It is also erroneous to assume that peasant communities
originate their own ballads or narrative songs. The product of
folk-improvisation is not typically the ballad but the song, and
17 Old English Ballads, p. lxxxvii.
18 The best instance of communal composition among the Indians which I
can cite is the following, which was recently brought to my attention. The
paragraph is from Frances Densmore's "Northern Ute Music" (1922) p. 26, a
volume issued as Bulletin 76 of the Publications of the American Bureau of
Ethnology.
Composition of Songs.-It was said by several singers that they "heard a
song in their sleep," sang it, and either awoke to find themselves singing it
aloud or remembered it and were able to sing it. No information was obtained
on any other method of producing songs. In this connection the writer desires
to record an observation on musical composition among the Sioux. A song was
sung at a gathering and she remarked: "That is different from any Sioux song
I have ever heard, it has so many peculiarities." The interpreter replied,
"That song was composed recently by several men working together. Each
man suggested something and they put it all together in the song." This is the
only instance of cooperation in the composition of an Indian song that has been
observed, adds Miss Densmore.
19 Evidence supporting this and the following generalizations has been
presented by me in various articles published in the Publications of the Modern
Language Association, Modern Language Notes, etc.
448
THE TERM "COMMUNAL"
song so produced is the most ephemeral type of song. The
folk improvise largely to familiar airs.20 They do not create
their own melodies, and especially not on the spur of the
moment. They make over, or add stanzas to, or somehow
manipulate, something already in existence. The typical
products of folk-improvisation are the lampoon, the satire, the
adaptation. This was well illustrated by the improvisations of
groups of singing soldiers during the recent war. It has often
been pointed out that in the Southern Appalachians exist
isolated communities, unlettered and cut off for a hundred
years from traffic with the rest of the world; and these communities
still entertain themselves with traditional song.
Conditions are ideal for the creation of communal ballads,
according to the orthodox theory. Yet their investigators have
not found that they have any body of song of their own creation,
whether pure lyrics or ballads. They still sing the English and
Scottish ballads brought over by their ancestors.2' Self-created
songs about their own life are conspicuously wanting. The
Southwestern cowboys perhaps live as communal a life as any
in our period; possibly they are more literate than the mountaineers,
but they are little more creative. The bulk of their
songs entered their circles from the outside world. Where
they have songs concerning themselves, they are fitted to
familiar melodies, and (at least the songs which have value or
memorableness) are adaptations of already existent material.
The best cowboy songs, having claim to originality, may be
traced to minor poets. The cowboy songs which are nearest to
genuine communal creations are those of weakest quality, are
not narrative, and are in character most ephemeral.22
20 The extent to whicho ld airs are preservedis quite astonishing. Many of
ourc urrenth ymnsa nd populars ongsa res et to century-oldm elodies-originally
made for songs of quite another character.
2 See Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk Songs from the
Southern Appalachians, 1917.
A critic who has recentlyr eaffirmedb elief in the emergenceo f the English
and Scottish ballad type from the unschooled peasantry is Professor G. H.
GerouldM, od.P hilol. xxi, August, 1923.
2 The orthodox contemporary American conception of the spontaneous,
gregarioucs ompositiono f the Englisha nd Scottisht raditionabl allads,o n social
occasions, may be illustrated by the familiar picture (Introd. to the Cambridge
edition of the English and Scottish Ballads, 1904) of a plausible method of
compositiono f "The Hangman'sT ree," or of some remotea ncestoro f it, by a
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LOUISE POUND
3. Another familiar doctrine that needs qualification or
rejection is the doctrine that "communal" ("traditional" is the
better term) preservation of a song brings improvement in the
narrative quality of the song. This is a fundamental belief
with Professor Gummere, and on it he bases his theory of
origins. It is true that there is sometimes improvement in
scattered instances. Ballads both gain and lose in oral transmission.
When a later text of a song in popular tradition is
compared with the original text, the dramatic quality is often
found to be enhanced by the omission of stanzas and of links in
homogeneousg roup; or, to go to a more recent book, by the picture of the
composition of "Sir Patrick Spens" in Greenlaw, Elson, and Keck's Literature
and Life, Book I, p. 237 (1922):
" .... imagine that you are one of a group of people who have been
powerfully moved by the tragic fate of Sir Patrick. You knew him or some of
his men. In this group the tragedy is being discussed. One man says he heard
that Sir Patrick suspected the hand of an enemy, but that he was too brave to
draw back even though he knew that the voyage meant death. Another says
that an old sailor observed portents and omens and promised a tragic outcome.
A third adds that such omens ought never to be disregarded. Others wonder
how the wives and sweetheartso f the deads ailorsf elt whent hey heardt he news,
and they speako f the unutterables adnesso f theirw aitinga t home,f or tidings.
And at last some one speaks of the dead men themselves, lying down there
fifty fathoms under the sea, their dead eyes open, their bodies gently rolling
from side to side with the motion of the water, or too far below the surface ever
to move. You see you have, in reality, a succession of broken bits of talk,
expressionso f mood, not a story told in an orderlyw ay or written up for the
newspaper. One member of the group and then another adds his bit. There
are moments of silence between. All are thinking of the horror, and deeply
moved. Then perhaps one, or two, or three, begin to put the thing into words.
The words fit some simple song that everyone knows. The group begins to
sing the song. The ballad is born.
Thus the ballads eemsn ot to be a story at all but just the expressiono f the
feelings of a whole group of people. It differs from the story in that it seems to
tell itself. It is not the work of an author who gives to the events an interpretation
or who carefullyc hoosesd etailss o that a definitei mpressionis built up in
the mindo f the reader. It expressest he reactionso f a group. It is impersonal.
It is a tale telling itself."
Therei s a conspicuoulsa ck of evidencef or the typical compositiono f ballads
in such a way, anywhere, or at any time, even among primitive peoples; and it
it is difficultt o show that it is a methodo f compositiont hat is psychologically
plausible. Yet nearlya ll the availableb allada nthologiesf or schools( see W. D.
Armes, xxxviii ff.; Neilson and Witham, xv and footnote; G. H. Stempel, xxvii
ff., etc.) paint for their readerst his mannero f compositionf or the Englisha nd
Scottish ballads.
450
THE TERM "COMMUNAL"
the story and the retention only of what is absolutely essential.
There may also be gain in compactness, in singableness, and in
concreteness of diction. A few examples have been cited to the
present writer by the British collector of folk-song, Cecil J.
Sharp, where the melodies of songs have improved in popular
preservation. And occasional instances can be brought up, as
already remarked, where individual texts show improvement.
But, as a principle, the doctrine does not hold. Individual
texts may grow better here and there for a time, especially in
the mouths of superior singers. But a single text of a ballad is
not the ballad itself. While one text is improving another may
be degenerating. Professor Child was right when he said that
the ballad is at its best "the earlier it is caught and fixed in
print."23 And in the long run, even the text which has improved
falls into decay. A traditionally preserved text is not static, and
there is no permanent incorporation into its multiple variants, of
improvements which may arise. At best there is betterment,
through so-called communal preservation, only for sporadic texts
and for a limited extent of time. The typical process, for the
great majority of traditional ballads is a process of decay.
4. The belief that the pattern or technique of the English
and Scottish ballad derives from a pattern set in remote times by
a singing dancing throng improvising communally is all that
remains among certain thinkers of the nineteenth century
communal theory. But even this remainder of that theory
does not deserve the support which it receives. The refrains,
salient situations, repetitions and commonplaces of style
appearing in many ballads (these are the features which are
traced to primitive times) need no such prehistoric derivation;
nor are they such fundamental differentiae of the ballad technique
as is commonly assumed. They are easily to be accounted
for in the same ways as for other species of folk-song exhibiting
them which are not termed ballads. The songs of primitive
groups improvising on festal occasions and the ballads appearing
in historic times among civilized peoples do not belong in the
same framework, and they should be kept distinct. Taken
down in a straight line to modern times, the songs of primitive
23 See W. M. Hart, "Professor Child and the Ballad," P. M. L. A. XXI
(1906), 770, 805, etc.
451
LOUISE POUND
festal groups bring us, on the improvisation side, to modern
folk-improvisations, like those of singing soldiers, not an extinct
type of folk-song, though not one of much frequency nor one
bringing very valuable product. Taken down to historic times
on the movement side, the primitive group songs bring us to
the ring-dance or movement or game songs which still exist
among us, songs in which the refrain is the essential feature.
But neither of these varieties of folk-song, the group improvisation
song or the dance or game song centering about a refrain,
is identical with the story-song or ballad, and neither variety
develops into the ballad. The narrative song is an independent
lyric type, and it first appears, not among primitive peoples, but
in historic times and among civilized peoples. All races,
primitive or civilized, have folk-songs, but not all have an
important body of ballad poetry. The richness in ballads of
the popular poetry of England and Denmark is not typical
but unusual.
5. Further, it is surely time that definition of the lyric species,
ballad, as "of communal composition" should be given up.24
At least, such composition should be brought forward as hypothetical,
not as a demonstrated fact. It is not a valid assumption,
even for that single species of ballad, the traditional folk
ballad. Remarks such as Professor Gummere's "A ballad
must be the outcome and expression of a whole community
and this community must be homogeneous"24 are not warranted
by the evidence. This homogeneity is a myth. It is a myth for
mediaeval times, as Chaucer realized when he differentiated the
types of tales which he placed in the mouths of the Canterbury
pilgrims. Even in Anglo-Saxon England, with its clearly
marked class divisions of ceSelingas, eorlas, ceorlas, lcetas, peowas,
there was no time when "society from king to peasant" had
identical interests. And even the songs of primitive peoples do
not originate as "the outcome and expression of the whole
community." It is also misleading to associate the term "communal"
invariably with the ballad, ignoring other lyric species
which deserve the term (however they may have originated)
far more than does the ballad, i.e., hymns, labor songs, student
2 Old English Ballads, p. xxvii. A recent critic who reaffirms belief in the
homogeneous throng and communal origins is Professor H. S. V. Jones, Jouwnal
of English and Germanic Philology, vol. xxii, January, 1923.
452
THE TERM "COMMUNAL'
songs, game songs. The term has attached itself to ballads;
yet it should not be emphasized as something which differentiates
ballads. Indeed, those who discuss ballads are
much given to confusing several kinds of song which properly
should be carefully distinguished. These kinds are: (1) Folkimprovisations,
a type of verse which appears among all peoples,
at all stages of development, from primitive gatherings to folkgatherings
(like those of soldiers) in our own day.25 But this
type of verse is not very durable or very important. The
product of the folk-improvisations of the illiterate, in particular,
has been rated far too high; (2) Genuine traditional game or
ring-dance songs, or dance songs proper, like those (many of
them once danced to by grown-ups) traditional in children's
games; and (3) Lyric-epics, or ballads proper, a type appearing
in England some centuries after the Norman Conquest and
attaining its height in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
It is partly because folk-improvisations lack story form, and
because genuine dance songs of traditional preservation are not
narrative, that such origin is to be doubted for the English and
Scottish lyric-epics collected by Professor Child. According
to all the evidence to be found, neither folk-improvisation nor
folk-dancing has ever produced narrative song, or any other
kind of song which is worth much poetically.
6. Lastly, even when we speak of "communal re-creation"
rather than communal creation of ballads, we are using the
term without real accuracy. There is re-creation by individual
hands of songs in popular tradition, but is this truly "communal?"
One singer in a community makes one set of changes,
another makes another set. Indeed the same singer does not
always sing a song in the same way, or with the same words.
The changes are not the product of a gesammtgeist. There is no
communal text; there are many shifting texts in the mouths of
many singers. The term "communal" is without real validity
even when we use it, not of the creation of ballads, but of their
re-creation or modification.
Here, and not under the classification "ballads," belongs the "Hinkie
Dinkie"o f Mr. AtchesonL . Hench ("CommunaCl ompositiono f Balladsi n the
A. E. F.," Journalo f AmericanF olk-Lorsv, ol. 34, p. 386).
453
454 LOUISE POUND
The conclusion to be drawn from the preceding considerations
is that, on the whole, literary historians and makers of textbooks,
would do well to give less conspicuous place to the now
hopelessly misused term "communal" in discussions of balladry
and folk-song, in the hope that this omission might generate in
them a new temper when theorizing concerning poetic origins.
They should also cease to derive the ballad from the "homogeneous
throng" whether of mediaeval peasantry or of primitive
tribes. A doctrine of inspiration which is now discarded in
other fields should not linger with belated tenacity in literary
criticism. Professor Child exhibited characteristic soundness of
judgment when he preferred the terms "popular" and "traditional"-
by far the safer terms- and when he remarked of the
English and Scottish ballads that "a man and not a people
has composed them," and that "the ballad is not originally the
product or the property of the common orders of people."26
LOUISE POUND
2 Johnson's Cyclopaedia, article "Ballads."