Songs That Live 1499 



many instances we have heard the fathers and mothers in their farm 

 homes, 



" Sing to their sons those melodies, 

 Those songs their fathers sung." 



How welcome such songs are with their age-long standards of loyalty 

 and i)urity and truth! Songs that have lived years and centuries in 

 the Old World because they sang of country, and home, and mother, 

 and God, should go on living in the New World, singing of country, and 

 home, and mother, and God. Richard of Saltoun said, " Let me write 

 the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws." Sing the songs 

 of the country whose blood you bring to America and you will help make 

 the laws that must best govern song-making and song-singing in this "land 

 of the free and home of the brave." If we are to become a music-loving 

 nation, we must have American music; it must smack of our soil; it must 

 embody the character and express the tendency and trend of American 

 life ; it must bear the marks of our weal and woe ; it must show in strongly 

 marked rhythms the effect of our developed and developing national 

 energy; it must be the faithful interpreter of the true American. 



Last year the December number of the ReacUng-Course for the Farm 

 Home was entitled The Christmas Festival, and on the last page of the 

 pamphlet were the music and words of the beautiful carol. Silent Night, 

 Holy Night. It was sung around miany Christmas firesides last year 

 and it will be sung again this year. We want all of the readers of the 

 Reading-Course for the Farm Home to sing on this Christmas Day. 

 We want you to sing songs that have lived and that will live. Therefore. 

 we are devoting the remaining pages of this number to a program of 

 songs for the home for Christmas Day. You will find included songs 

 for the old and for the young, brave songs and tender songs, songs of 

 the Christ child and of home and of native land. Add to these songs 

 those that are particularly loved in your own home and let us all join 

 in this Christmas festival of songs that live. 



