Page:One Hundred English Folksongs (1916).djvu/16

 The opponents of this school, however, impressed by the fact that the essential characteristics of the folksong—its freshness, spontaneity, naturalness, and unconventionality—are the very qualities which are conspicuously absent from the popular song-music of the past, maintain that folksongs are the products not of the individual, but of a people or community, and that we are indebted to the process of oral tradition not merely for preserving them, but for moulding, developing, and, in a sense, creating them as well.

This is not the occasion to enter into a lengthy discussion upon an abstruse and highly controversial question of this sort. Suffice it to say that the writer is a stout upholder of the communal theory of origin; that he believes that the nature of the folksong and its history can be satisfactorily explained only on that hypothesis; that the most typical qualities of the folksong have been laboriously acquired during its journey down the ages, in the course of which its individual angles and irregularities have been rubbed and smoothed away, just as the pebble on the seashore has been rounded by the action of the waves; that the suggestions, unconsciously made by individual singers, have at every stage of the evolution of the folksong been weighed and tested by the community, and accepted or rejected by their verdict; and that the life history of the folksong has been one of continuous growth and development, always tending to approximate to a form which should be at once congenial to the taste of the community and expressive of its feelings, aspirations, and ideals.

The careful preservation of its folk-music is to a nation a matter of the highest import. Art, like language, is but a method of human expression, due to the development and specialization of qualities that are natural and inborn. If, therefore, it is to folfilfulfil [sic] this fonctionfunction [sic] efficiently, it must never be divorced from, but must always faithfully reflect, those qualities which are peculiar to the nation from which it proceeds. A nation’s music, for instance, must, at every stage of its development, be closely related to those spontaneous musical utterances which are the outcome of a purely natural instinct, and which proceed, it will always be found, from those of the community who are least affected by extraneous educational influences—that is, from the folk. The penalty that must inevitably be paid when this principle is ignored is well exemplified by the vicissitudes through which music in England passed after the death of Purcell. Prior to the Restoration, musical England held a proud and foremost position among the nations of Europe, a preëminence, however, which it completely lost in the two following centuries, and has never since regained. This very remarkable change was clearly brought about by, or at any rate synchronized with, the open disparagement—at first by the educated classes, and later on by the musicians themselves—of our native music, and the corresponding exaltation of all that was of foreign manufacture. In other words, music in England, which had hitherto been distinctively and demonstrably English in character, fell from its high pedestal immediately it became divorced from the national tradition.

The collection and preservation of our folk-music, whatever else it has done, has at least restored the Englishman’s confidence in the inherent ability of his nation to produce great music. Adverse conditions, political, economic, sociological, or what not, may for a time prevent him from making the fullest use of his national inheritance, and postpone the establishment of a distinctive school of music worthy of the tradition of his country; yet, sooner or later, given favorable conditions, English music will assuredly be reborn and once again assume that position which it held before the Restoration.

The greatest care has been exercised in the selection of the songs for this volume, in order that the collection may be thoroughly representative of the subject and contain one or more examples of each of the chief types of English folksong. With this end in view, it has been found necessary to limit the selection to folksongs proper, and to exclude carols, sea-chanteys, children’s games, nursery songs, etc.