From W. Matthews, Navaho Gambling Songs (p. 18) translated from the Navaho by Eda Lou Walton; Wildcat, i i, He is walking, e, Wildcat, i i, He is walking, e, Down he began to run A place toward; at him I ran, "Rauu," to me he said. In the group of gambling chants from which the last was selected we find the "Magpie's song," a metaphorical expression of the coming of dawn. Like the white which tips the magpie's wing, are the white feet of day stepping on the mountain tops. From W. Matthews, Navaho Gambling Songs (p. 9), retranslated from the original language by Eda Lou Walton. A‘a‘ái-ne! a aái-ne! Ya'ani-ainè! Ya'a'ni-ainè! Here underneath His wings, the white in, His feet the morning are. It dawns! It dawns! Because simple predications so largely predominate in the songs of which our published sources consist, we may presume that this is the Nahavo method. Such a method allowing the listener's mind to supply the connection, is, it seems to the present writers, a meet, right, and fitting method for a great religious poetry, which, in both our opinions, is a true characterization of Navaho poetry. The Biblical Psalms, for example, are faulty for us in somewhat the same way. They are compositions high in the poetic scale, but do not in their pastoral imagery signify to us of today all that they signified to the pastoral people who composed them. Yet their lines are for us still resonant with the deep religious emotion in which they originated. There is a poetic greatness in Navaho verse, though it would not appear perhaps to a totally unsympathetic eye. They are much further removed from us than the ancient Hebrews are. PARALLELISM IN NAVAHO POETRY Parallelism, a correspondence of terms in one line to those of another in respect of meaning, not in respect of number of syllables or of rhythmic groups, is an inner orderliness of intellectual expression, but it is based upon a universal biological principle, repetition with variation. Parallelism, wherein the emotions of man swing like a pendulum back and forth across the same idea, exemplifies, as Merder remarks, the larger movement of the life rhythm, "wherein deep calleth to deep, tree to tree, bird to bird all the world over." As the simplest organism expresses desire through repetitive action, so man tends to phrase his emotional thought in iterative statements. These and a number of other considerations lead one to look for parallelism in any primitive poetry. It is, also, a device which never fails of an inner appeal, as witness the national epic of Finland (the Kalevala) or Longfellow's Hiawatha (which even small children love). The loftiest examples of parallelism are those of the Old Testament, the best study of which is Popper and Newman's. There is a temptation to quote some examples of Biblical parallelism, which are among the finest things in literature. For example, an "envelope" parallelism, in which a series of parallel verses are enclosed between an identical opening and closing, is the following: From Moulton, The Literary Study of the Bible (p. 53). Do men gather grapes of thorns Or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, Therefore, by their fruits shall ye know them. An example of a "chain" parallelism, made up of a succession of clauses so linked that the goal of one clause becomes the starting point of the next, is the following, found in the book of Joel (ch. 1:4). From Moulton, The Literary Study of the Bible (p. 52). That which the palmer worm hath left Hath the locust eaten; And that which the locust hath left Hath the canker worm eaten; And that which the canker worm hath left Hath the caterpillar caten. The critics recognize as "repeating" parallelism, the type in which a second line repeats the thought of the first in slightly different form. A good example is the War Song of Lamech, in the fourth chapter of Genesis: Ada and Zillah, hear my voice, Ye wives of Lamech, harken unto my saying, For I have slain a man for wounding me, If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, or the old familiar lines from Isaiah: He shall come riding upon an ass, the passage which is so comically misconstrued by the New Testament author of the Palm Sunday story, who mounts the Saviour upon a she-donkey, with a colt running by her side "that the saying might be fulfilled, 'He shall come riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass'." It is to be remarked that a still simpler form of parallelism exists, which might be called absolute parallelism, where a phrase or verse is mechanically repeated over and over as a refrain. So in the Psalms: Sihon King of the Amorites, The Old World example most strikingly like our Navaho poetry is a Babylonian hymn: From Langdon, Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms (p. 39). Which like the spirit is whose secret founded, whose secret none knoweth; His word like the spirit is founded, whose secret none knoweth; The word of Anu like the spirit is founded, its secret none knoweth; The word of Enlil like the spirit is founded, whose The word which stilleth the heaven on high; The word which bringeth woe to the Annunaki. His word hath no seer, no prophet hath it. His word is an onrushing storm which none can oppose. The junior author has analyzed every line of Navaho verse to be found in print, with the following results as regards parallelism. Seventy percent of all Navaho parallelisms are of the "complete" form, with an exact correspondence between the two numbers. This is a striking fact; and would hardly bear out Miss Skinner's dictum that the poetry of the Indian is an involuntary, elemental echo of the breezes swaying the tree-tops, or whatever her idea was. On the contrary, Navaho poetry is obviously a highly evolved and highly refined product. Within the couplets which are of this regular type, precedence is given by the Navaho to a simple repetitive parallelism, which type makes up forty per cent of the whole. Of little importance to the Navaho is the subvariety in which the order of ideas becomes transposed, which type is found in only one per cent of the cases; this in spite of the fact that it was a form much cultivated by the Hebrews. The case is similar to what might be called incremental parallelism. This is common in Navaho poetry, and the order is carefully repeated in a large number of cases, making up thirty-two percent of the whole number of parallelisms. The cases in which the parallelism is incremental, but the order transposed, make up four per cent of the whole. Antithetical parallelisms constitute about sixteen per cent of the whole number, transposition within the antitheses being very rare. Navaho verse form is therefore based primarily on "complete" parallelism. The junior author is much impressed by a sense of variety which she receives in reading Navaho poetry, a variety or liveliness which maintains itself in spite of the comparative uniformity of outward form. She finds an explanation for this effect of variety and liveliness in the fact that the more relentlessly parallelistic verses occur in the preludes. After the prelude is finished, the sense moves forward rapidly or even dramatically. The junior author also discovers both in the poetry of the Navaho and in Indian verse somewhat generally, a type of parallelism not found in the Bible, where the iteration is an iteration of meaningless syllables. Such iteration is found, for example, in the songs of the Chippewa, Omaha, and Teton Sioux. This is a point where Indian verse diverges from the Hebrew poetry of our present Bible. In the meantime it is important to bear in mind that the study of all the Navaho verse which has been published, shows that certain types of parallelism are fundamentally in control of it. The junior author believes, and the senior author agrees with her, that the Navaho singer would no more consider breaking away radically from the tribally approved verse-pattern than an English poet of the age of Pope would have considered a complete break with the heroic couplet. The completeness of Navaho parallelism is certainly its most striking feature; and shows, we think, that its estate is far from primitive. The junior author is also struck with the fact (which the senior author never suspected) that Modern Irish and Scottish poetry, like English songs, runs strongly to a parallelism similar to that of the Navaho. This Gaelic type of poetry is somewhat naively emotional. For example, hear Thomas More, in synonymously parallelistic strains: Oh! the days when I was young, And with nectar crowned the night; or T. G. McGuire, with his incrementally parallelistic ditty: Twice have I sailed the Atlantic o'er, Twice dwelt an exile in the west; Twice did kind nature's skill restore The quiet in my troubled breast. Caroline Norton chants in measures of alternating parallelism: I would not give my Irish wife For the Queen of France's hand. The place of parallelism in the English ballads or in the poems of Scott and Burns is too well known to need comment. The |