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What Norden really does is to scour away accretions of silliness, romantic and sentimental phrases, which are too often held as part and parcel of a sensible belief about poetry in its early stage. Granted, as it is to be hoped the reader will ultimately grant, that singing and dancing wax in importance as one traces back the path of the arts, granted that verse and song covered a far greater field of activity in the beginning than they cover now, the notion that men with language in a fluent state, and on intellectual topics, sang instead of talking, that primitive life was like an Italian opera-stage, that the better part of man’s utterance was given over to lyrical wonder at the sunset and the stars,—these ideas, even when hallowed by great names, must be tossed to oblivion. But such a jettison by no means involves the sinking of the ship itself; to change the figure, gentlemen who have overthrown a minor idol or so must not loudly proclaim that they have razed the temple and rooted out the faith. For example, Grimm of old and Kögel of late^[180] were too fond of poetic laws; the former confounded quaintness with beauty, and the latter discovered too much rhythm. The Frisian code, Kögel seems to have thought, was composed and recited as poetry, as alliterative verse. Well, this is perhaps Frisiomania of a dangerous kind, and Dr. Siebs^[181] is within his rights in preaching another sermon on the old but dubious text of Frisia non cantat. The laws, he says, were indeed alliterative; but they were neither rhythmic nor poetical. So far, so good; the advantage seems to be on the side of Siebs; the idol totters and possibly falls. But now to pull down the temple! Whence came this alliteration? Like rime, it is a product of prose, declares the iconoclast, “having, in the first place, nothing to do with poetry,” and probably rising in answer to a demand of the language of trade, which needed to lay stress on the emphatic parts of one’s plea for a good bargain. That is, the mainstay of all Germanic rhythm is a “drummer’s” device, and begins in the shifty phrases of the early Germanic hausierer. This is a world of broken hopes. Norden for rime,^[182] and Siebs for alliteration, which is only rime of another sort, have entered a terrific caveat against the historian of primitive song. Is rime, then, the fine flower and outgrowth of a stump-speech, and is alliteration, poor changeling, unmasked in these latter days as an intruder and an alien in poetic halls, a by-blow of the primitive bagman? No, the temple is not pulled down. The rhythmical or unrhythmical character of Frisian laws is one thing; the origin of rime, the functions and progress of it, cannot be even guessed on the basis of such studies.