PERSONAL CLAN POETRY.
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changes in the status of early song-makers[1] nor the progress of literary forms from verse to prose can here receive more than a passing notice. We prefer to devote the space at our command to a brief outline of the aspect which physical nature assumes under the eyes of clansmen.
- ↑ Such changes in status were due to a great variety of causes. Thus, the introduction of writing reduced the value which recitation, with or without musical accompaniment, had possessed in days when this invention was either unknown or little used. (Cf. Renan, on the Kasída, Hist. des langues Sémitiques, p. 359, edit. 1878.) Another influence powerfully affecting the status of early song-makers is the growth of central government. By a statute of the thirty-ninth year of Elizabeth, for example, "minstrels wandering abroad" are included among "rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars"; so low had the early song-maker of England sunk in the Elizabethan centralisation of force and culture. (Cf. Percy, Essay on Ancient English Minstrels, prefixed to his Reliques, vol. i.)
