not lag behind others in the art of mimicry,[39] we can well imagine that the Latin hymns sung in church or procession might easily form the germ of the profane _cossante_. A further characteristic of the _cossante_ is that the _i_-sound of the first distich is followed by an _a_-sound in the second (_ricercando ora il grave, ora l’acuto_) and this too maybe traced to a religious source, two answering choirs of singers, treble and bass.[40] It is clear at least that these alternating sounds are echoes of music: one almost hears the clash of the _adufe_ in the _louçana_ (answering to _garrida_) or _ramo_ (_pinho_). The words of these poems were, indeed, always accompanied by the _son_ (= music). But if born in the Church, the _cossante_ suffered a transformation when it went out into the world. The rhythm of many of the songs in the _Cancioneiros_ is so obtrusive that they seem to dance out of the printed page. One would like to think that in the ears of the peasants the sound of the wheel mingled with the echo of a hymn and its refrain as they met at what was, even then, no doubt, a favourite gathering-place--the mill[41]--and thus a lyric poem became a dance-song. The _cossante Solo ramo_ would thus proceed, sung by ‘the dancers dancing in tune’: (Verses 3 and 4) Vodas fazen a meu amigo (amado) Porque mentiu o desmentido (perjurado) E choran olhos d’amor, the first line of the third distich repeating the second line of the first (and in the same way the first line of the fifth the second line of the third), in _leixa-pren_ (_laisser prendre_) corresponding evidently to the movements of the dance.[42] The love-lorn maidens danced together, the men forming a circle to look on. St. Augustine considered the dance to be a circle of which the Devil was the centre; in real life the Devil was often replaced by a tree (or by a _mayo_). The refrain was a notable feature of the _cossante_ in all its phases as it went, a _bailada_ (dance-song) from the _terreiro_, to become a _serranilha_ on the hills, or at pilgrimage shrines a _cantiga de romaria_,[43] or a _barcarola_ (boat-song) or _alvorada_ (dawn-song). A marked and thoroughly popular characteristic of the _cossante_ is its wistful sadness,[44] the _soidade_ which is already mentioned more than once in the _Cancioneiros_,[45] and, born in Galicia, continued in Portugal, combined with a more garish tone under the hotter sun of the South. Thus we have the melancholy Celtic temperament, absorbed in Nature, acting on the forms suggested by an alien religion till they become vague cries to the sea, to the deer of the hills, the flower of the pine. The themes are as simple and monotonous--the monotony of snowdrops or daffodils--as the form in which they are sung. A girl in the gloom of the pine-trees mourning for her lover, the birds in the cool of the morning singing of love, the deer troubling the water of a