Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/152

 I ^6 Reviews.

Chants Populaires de la Grande-Lande et des Regions voisiNES. Recueillis par F#.lix Arnaudin. Musique, texte patois et traduction francaise. Tome I. Paris : Honore Champion, 1912. Pp. lxxxvi + 512. 8 fr.

It is more than a quarter of a century since M. Arnaudin pub- lished a small but interesting and characteristic collection of Contes Populaires of a district in the south-east of France, little known to the outside world, and perhaps possessing few attractions, save to those to whom ancient manners, customs, and traditions, with their quaint peculiarities and provincialisms, are dear. It was the first fruit of a labour to which he had already dedicated several years, in the effort to save for the benefit of posterity the knowledge of the modes of thought and ways of life of a peasantry long isolated from the main current of modern ideas and the development of modern civilization. Since that time he has continued his collections with unwearied diligence ; for the rupture with the past is now, as he says, at last an accomplished fact, and haste was necessary if anything was to be saved "of what was our ancient life and shed so much originality, so much primitive simplicity around our old hearths."

With the present volume he has begun the publication of the songs of the rural population. It includes cradle songs and dance songs, with the tunes to which they are sung. To both of these the attention of the Folk-Song Society should be directed, with the object of comparing them with English songs. They have been collected with great pains, in or.der to ensure scrupulous exactitude even to the smallest details. M. Arnaudin lays stress on the absolute sincerity with which they have been recorded, and without which, it is obvious, they would be worthless for all pur- poses of students. Of the coarser songs he has been very sparing. Coarseness, and even sometimes obscenity, is a feature of all Naiurvolker, including in that category the uneducated classes of civilization. Entirely to ignore this feature would be to present a picture that would be untrue to life. But, he justly says, the bulk of such songs must be and remain Kpv--d6ia. What are mild enough to be given are a hint that such things formed part of the peasant mentality ; and we need no more.