Puttenham is here referring to that instinct of primitive men, which compels them in all moments of high-wrought feeling, and on all solemn occasions, to give utterance to a kind of chant. {157a} Such a chant is the song of Lamech, when he had ’slain a man to his wounding.’  So in the Norse sagas, Grettir and Gunnar sing when they have anything particular to say; and so in the Marchen—­the primitive fairy tales of all nations—­scraps of verse are introduced where emphasis is wanted.  This craving for passionate expression takes a more formal shape in the lays which, among all primitive peoples, as among the modern Greeks to-day, {157b} are sung at betrothals, funerals, and departures for distant lands.  These songs have been collected in Scotland by Scott and Motherwell; their Danish counterparts have been translated by Mr. Prior.  In Greece, M. Fauriel and Dr. Ulrichs; in Provence, Damase Arbaud; in Italy, M. Nigra; in Servia, Talvj; in France, Gerard de Nerval—­have done for their separate countries what Scott did for the Border.  Professor Child, of Harvard, is publishing a beautiful critical collection of English Volkslieder, with all known variants from every country.

A comparison of the collections proves that among all European lands the primitive ‘versicles’ of the people are identical in tone, form, and incident.  It is this kind of early expression of a people’s life—­careless, abrupt, brief, as was necessitated by the fact that they were sung to the accompaniment of the dance—­that we call ballads.  These are distinctly, and in every sense, popular poems, and nothing can cause greater confusion than to apply the same title, ‘popular,’ to early epic poetry.  Ballads are short; a long ballad, as Mr. Matthew Arnold has said, creeps and halts.  A true epic, on the other hand, is long, and its tone is grand, noble, and sustained.  Ballads are not artistic; while the form of the epic, whether we take the hexameter or the rougher laisse of the French chansons de geste, is full of conscious and admirable art.  Lastly, popular ballads deal with vague characters, acting and living in vague places; while the characters of an epic are heroes of definite station, whose descendants are still in the land, whose home is a recognisable place, Ithaca, or Argos.  Now, though these two kinds of early poetry—­the ballad, the song of the people; the epic, the song of the chiefs of the people, of the ruling race—­are distinct in kind, it does not follow that they have no connection, that the nobler may not have been developed out of the materials of the lower form of expression.  And the value of the ‘Kalevala’ is partly this, that it combines the continuity and unison of the epic with the simplicity and popularity of the ballad, and so forms a kind of link in the history of the development of poetry.  This may become clearer as we proceed to explain the literary history of the Finnish national poem.