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Updated: May 29, 2025
When I closed my eyes the last veil vanished, and I saw the lovely spot sea and shore, mountain and city, the gay throng of people, and the wonderful game of ball. I seemed to hear the same music a stream of joyful melodies, old and new, strange and familiar, one after another. Presently a little dance-song came along, in six-eighth measure, something quite new to me.
Ballad was an old French word spelt balade. It really means a dance-song. For ballads were at first written to be sung to dances slow, shuffling, balancing dances such as one may still see in out-of-the-way places in Brittany. These ballads often had a chorus or refrain in which every one joined. But by degrees the refrain was dropped and the dancing too.
In the works of the great Attic tragedians the chorus, or dance-song, which had descended from earlier times still remained the principal feature of the representation. It was the drama that crystallized out of the music and dance, not the music that was called in to support or adorn the drama.
The muskrat stood smiling. On his lips hung a ready "Yes, my friend," when Iktomi would ask, "My friend, will you sit down beside me and share my food?" That was the custom of the plains people. Yet Iktomi sat silent. He hummed an old dance-song and beat gently on the edge of the pot with his buffalo-horn spoon.
Within the ring, around a small drum, sat the chosen singers, nodding their heads and blinking their eyes. They sang in unison a merry dance-song, and beat a lively tattoo on the drum. Following a winding footpath near by, came a bent figure of a Dakota brave. He bore on his back a very large bundle. With a willow cane he propped himself up as he staggered along beneath his burden.
Humming a dance-song, one from his bundle of mystery songs, Iktomi hopped and darted about at an imaginary dance and feast. He gathered dry willow sticks and broke them in two against his knee. He built a large fire out of doors. The flames leaped up high in red and yellow streaks. Now Iktomi returned to the coyote who had been looking on through his eyelashes.
We think of it to-day as a song that tells a story, usually of popular origin. Derived etymologically from ballare, to dance, it means first of all, a "dance-song," and is the same word as "ballet." Solomon's "Song of Songs" is called in the Bishops' Bible of 1568 "The Ballet of Ballets of King Solomon."
As a matter of fact, however, the best authorities seem to be agreed that the primitive "dance-song" was rather a monotonous, meaningless chant, and that the original pitch- elements were mechanically supplied by the first musical instruments; these being at first merely for noise, and becoming truly vibrating, sonorous bodies because they were more easily struck if they were hard or taut.
And with tears in his eyes shall he ask you for a dance; and I myself will sing a song to his dance: A dance-song and satire on the spirit of gravity my supremest, powerfulest devil, who is said to be "lord of the world." And this is the song that Zarathustra sang when Cupid and the maidens danced together: Of late did I gaze into thine eye, O Life!
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