laborative 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 record-
ing 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.

The songs of primitive peoples have received much at-
tention in recent years, especially the songs of the Ameri-
can Indians. An immense amount of material has been
collected and made available; and this has been done in
a scientific way, with the help of countless phonographic
and other records. Instead of having to rely on the stray
testimonies of travellers, explorers, historians, and essay-
ists, the student of primitive poetry has now at his disposal
an amount of data unavailable to his predecessors. He
need not linger among the fascinating mysteries of roman-
tic hypotheses, but can supply himself with the carefully
observed facts of scientific record.²

In this matter it cannot be valid to object that we should
not look among North or South American Indians, or Eski-

-2-