Records of early literature and early religion show the refrain in its original guise as a part of the choral song, and it echoes audibly the steps of the dance. Nowhere is this echo more insistent than in that hymn of the Arval brothers, sung, of course, with a dance that was confined to the priests, and already come a long way from the shouting and leaping throng of primitive time; nevertheless, as a hymn used in processions about the fields, it is to be connected with the survivals of similar rites and the songs still heard from European peasants at the harvest-home. In the inscription which preserves it, each verse, except the last, is given thrice.[622] A free translation[623] follows:—
Help us, O Lares, help us, Lares, help us! And thou, O Marmar, suffer not Fell plague and ruin’s rot Our folk to devastate. Be satiate, O fierce Mars, be satiate! Leap o’er the threshold! Halt! now beat the ground! Be satiate, O fierce Mars, be satiate! Leap o’er the threshold! Halt! now beat the ground! Be satiate, O fierce Mars, be satiate! Leap o’er the threshold! Halt! now beat the ground! Call to your aid the heroes all, call in alternate strain; Call, call the heroes all. Call to your aid the heroes all, call in alternate strain. Help us, O Marmar, help us, Marmar, help us! Bound high in solemn measure, bound and bound again, Bound high and bound again![624]
Refrain and iteration are here in thrall to religious ceremony, and the priest has laid hands upon the rough material of the throng; but the throng is present, takes part,—even if, in later time, by deputies,—and invention is at a minimum, appearing only in its regulative, and not in its originating force. It is easy to see how question and answer, strophe and antistrophe, are simply a development and division out of the crowd with one voice, as in the Greek chorus. So, too, in an Assyrian hymn:[625]—
Who is sublime in the skies? Thou alone, thou art sublime. Who is sublime upon earth? Thou alone, thou art sublime.