Those features of it which make for tedium when it is read—­repetition, stock epithets, set phrases for given situations—­are the very things best suited, with their recurring well-known syllables, to fix the attention of listeners more firmly, or to stir it when it drowses; at the least they provide a sort of recognizable scaffolding for the events, and it is remarkable how easily the progress of events may be missed when poetry is declaimed.  Indeed, if the primitive epic poet could avoid some of the anxieties peculiar to the composition of literary epic, he had others to make up for it.  He had to study closely the delicate science of holding auricular attention when once he had got it; and probably he would have some difficulty in getting it at all.  The really great poet challenges it, like Homer, with some tremendous, irresistible opening; and in this respect the magnificent prelude to Beowulf may almost be put beside Homer.  But lesser poets have another way.  That prolixity at the beginning of many primitive epics, their wordy deliberation in getting under way, is probably intentional.  The Song of Roland, for instance, begins with a long series of exceedingly dull stanzas; to a reader, the preliminaries of the story seem insufferably drawn out.  But by the time the reciter had got through this unimportant dreariness, no doubt his audience had settled down to listen.  The Chanson d’Antioche contains perhaps the most illuminating admission of this difficulty.  In the first “Chant,” the first section opens:[4]

  Seigneurs, faites silence; et que tout bruit cesse,
  Si vous voulez entendre une glorieuse chanson. 
  Aucun jongleur ne vous en dira une meilleure.

Then some vaguely prelusive lines.  But the audience is clearly not quite ready yet, for the second section begins: 

  Barons, ecoutez-moi, et cessez vos querelles! 
  Je vous dirai une tres-belle chanson.

And after some further prelude, the section ends: 

  Ici commence la chanson ou il y a tant a apprendre.

The “Chanson” does, indeed, make some show of beginning in the third section, but it still moves with a cautious and prelusive air, as if anxious not to launch out too soon.  And this was evidently prudent, for when the fourth section opens, direct exhortation to the audience has again become necessary: 

  Maintenant, seigneurs, ecoutez ce que dit l’Ecriture.

And once more in the fifth section: 

  Barons, ecoutez un excellent couplet.

In the sixth, the jongleur is getting desperate: 

  Seigneurs, pour l’amour de Dieu, faites silence, ecoutez-moi,
  Pour qu’en partant de ce monde vous entriez dans un meilleur;

but after this exclamation he has his way, though the story proper is still a good way off.  Perhaps not all of these hortatory stanzas were commonly used; any or all of them could certainly be omitted without damaging the poem.  But they were there to be used, according to the judgment of the jongleur and the temper of his audience, and their presence in the poem is very suggestive of the special difficulties in the art of rhapsodic poetry.