Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/153

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to the making of a shirt as a sign that "you shall be a true-lover of mine " certainly is connected with the widely-spread custom of the bride or betrothed girl presenting a shirt of her own making to the man of her choice.

We meet also with an Aargau version of the action-song known to English children as "Would you know how doth the peasant?" This, together with its familiar tune, has always been recognised as an importation from the Continent. In Bern " WoUt ihr tvissen, wie der Bai/er?" is sung to the same air as in our country; the Aargau tune is different, and it is divided into solo and chorus after the manner of an old song of occupation, which no doubt it once was. The text shows signs of being used by grown-up folk, and ends with cynical allusions to the peasant and his wife.

The music of these songs presents precisely the same character- istics as that of Herr Grolimund's collection made in Canton Soleure. Amongst 272 melodies {plus variants,) which compose the Aargau collection there is not one tune in the minor or showing modal traces. The airs are built on the chords of tonic, dominant and subdominant,; beauty of curve is strangely absent from them, and the cadences are frankly commonplace. Here, as in other Swiss collections, there is plain evidence that fine melody has been killed by the habit of facile "part-singing" in schools and Sanger- Vereine. Throughout German Switzerland any group of persons will at any moment burst forth into music on these conventional and undistinguished lines ; the plan for making the melody and harmony being so simple that endless permutations may be indulged in, as in the "chop-stick waltzes" (which hail from Germany), without upsetting the general effect. Herr Gassmann, in his collection of folk-songs of the Luzerner Wiggcrtal 7ifid IJi?iteria?id (1906), devotes two pages to describing this Swiss method of singing. The soloist or Vortrciger is sup- ported by the next best singer, who is called the Sekujidant and improvises a harmony much as do people fond of "singing a second." Other singers put in the harmonies that seem appro- priate. Obviously, this habit of improvising " parts" has cramped Swiss folk-music and is responsible for its monotony. Probably in no collections of folk-song of any other country would it be pos- sible to search through hundreds of tunes without finding one in