Songs That Live 1405 



intellectual welfare of our homes. Often, too, that answer differs little 

 in meaning from the one we have already made to ourselves. It helps, 

 however, to clear our thinking and to add further conviction. Having 

 read what these men and women said on the question of good songs, we 

 feel quickened in our judgment as to the elements that combine to make 

 a good song. We study the component factors; we apply to songs the 

 tests that will bring an answer which shall represent our personal esti- 

 mate of their worth ; our power to judge grows ; we become censors of our 

 home songs. 



TESTS TO BE APPLIED TO A SONG 



Has it lived? 



Though time is not an absolute test of a song, yet long life becomes a 

 guarantee of its worth. The critics say that half a century should be 

 asked of a song before it can be said to have lived. The maxims say 

 " a good song is sung by more generations than its own," and " a song is 

 good that sees a man through his lifetime." 



Songs that have lived may be grouped in three classes, the folk song, 

 the folk ballad, and the art song. 



1. The folk song. — Louis Elson describes the folk song as the " wild 

 brier rose of music springing up by the wayside of art, and coming into 

 being without any care being lavi-shed upon it, without the artificial aids 

 of music ; it represents the natural side of an art that has gradually become 

 scientific." Folk songs are the outgrowth of experience and feeling on 

 the part of persons whose names the world, which has kept the songs 

 alive for years and centuries, may never have known. The special value 

 of these songs is their quality of recording folk, racial, and national char- 

 acteristics in the simplest of songs. " History is punctuated with folk 

 song," Carlyle wrote. 



2. The folk ballad and the national song. — -There seems to be no hard 

 and fast rules whereby folk songs and folk ballads may be distinguished. 

 However, the folk ballad ordinarily records its authorship, and it tells its 

 story with more attempt at verse and at melody. Unlike the folk song, 

 it asks the world to yield to its spirit by joining in a refrain or chorus. 

 Sir Hubert Parry tells us that the opposite of a pure folk-song is the song 

 made with commercial intention out of " snippets of musical slang," — 

 he refers to the cheap song of the day. In between this song and the pure 

 folk-song the folk ballad seems to have its place, Longfellow in speaking 

 of ballads says: 



They are the gypsy children of song, born under green hedgerows, in the leafy lanes 

 and bypaths of literature in the genial summer time, and many a life story is con- 

 tained in the simple words of a favorite ballad. Nevertheless we seldom realize what 

 lies beneath the surface of the words, when we hear some of the simple old songs of our 



