Carmen (verse) - Chanting

Chanting

That incantations were chanted is a matter of common observance and scarcely needs illustration. For example, in magic rites, the purpose of which was to induce a dislocated or broken bone to come together, the incantation was sung (cantare). Tibullus writes that a witch composed a charm for him, to be chanted three times, after which he had to spit; then Delia's husband would believe gossip about other lovers of Delia, but not about her and Tibullus.

The two oldest prayers of the Romans which are still known—the Carmen Arvale and the Carmen Saliare—were both chanted. Livy writes that "the leaping priests went through the city chanting their hymns." There is reason to believe that the old prayers which Cato has preserved in his treatise on agriculture were originally in metrical form; but in the directions given to the worshiper, the verb dicito, and not cantato, precedes the prayer, showing that, in Cato's time at least, such prayers were spoken rather than sung. However, these prayers, even in the form in which they are found in Cato, are predominantly spondaic, in keeping with the slow movement of the chant and with the solemn religious character of the rites. In ceremonies intended to bring thunderbolts down from the sky, incantations were used.

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Famous quotes containing the word chanting:

    In the far South the sun of autumn is passing
    Like Walt Whitman walking along a ruddy shore.
    He is singing and chanting the things that are part of him,
    The worlds that were and will be, death and day.
    Nothing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end.
    His beard is of fire and his staff is a leaping flame.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    Along the avenue of cypresses,
    All in their scarlet cloaks and surplices
    Of linen, go the chanting choristers,
    The priests in gold and black, the villagers. . . .
    —D.H. (David Herbert)