We may grant that folk-music has been handed down traditionally by many generations of singers, but if it has pleased these different generations we must also admit that any new composition of folk-music, to please the people, must conform to their common demand.
Folk-music seems to have held its own traditional ideals longer and more closely than music composed for that class which has so persistently ignored it. The cultured musician is always, consciously or unconsciously, influenced by the music of his day, and as a consequence adheres to its idioms, or is genius enough to found a school of his own. His music too is far more elaborate than that produced by the rustic, or untaught musician. It has harmony, and many more points of evidence that enable us definitely to fix its period of composition.
The composer of folk-music may be compared, in a sense, to the Indian, or Chinese art-worker who repeats the class of patterns that has come down to him from time immemorial. When European influence was brought to bear on his work his patterns became debased, lost their original beauty, and gained nothing from the new source of inspiration.
There is no space in this small manual to enter into a disquisition on the Modes. The reader is referred to such a work as the new edition of Grove’s _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_ (vol. iii., p. 222), to Carl Engel’s _Study of National Music_, and to a most valuable contribution to the subject by Miss A. G. Gilchrist, “Note on the Modal System of Gaelic Tunes,” in the _Journal of the Folk-Song Society_, vol. iv., No. 16.
The following are given as examples of modal folk-tunes, in the modes most frequently found:—
One moonlight night, as I sat high, I looked for one, but two came by; The boughs did bend, the leaves did shake, To see the hole the fox did make. ]
_Noted by Miss L. E. Broadwood_ _Sung by Mr Lough, Surrey_
As I roved out one evening, being in the blooming spring, I heard a lovely damsel fair most grievously did sing, Saying “Cruel were my parents that did me so annoy. They did not let me marry with my bonny lab’ring boy.” ]
[Music: CHRISTMAS CAROL AS SUNG IN NORTH YORKSHIRE
God rest you merry, merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay, Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas day, To save our souls from Satan’s pow’r that long had gone astray, Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, and joy, and joy, Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, and joy. ]