Fascinating. The other day my friend explained the idea of the Hegelian dialect to me. Previously I'd only known it as "problem, reaction, solution", but a more general version is "thesis, antithesis, synthesis". Since he pointed it out I've been noticing examples every day... like right now in your shepherd boy's chant.

They are ruled - their ideas are controlled by a dominant paradigm
They shed blood - they react violently to the dominant paradigm
They rule - the new paradigm takes hold, hopefully by incorporating the truth from the previous paradigm.