No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 375 



But to-uight let us }»rove to eacli other how, thougli local ti-adi- 

 tion.s give lise to inteiesling and loiig-liveil songs, tiie songs thai live 

 and will live are those which we can all share iu common because 

 of their appeal to us all. We shall not apologize that the personal 

 must enter in. My home is not one of the t^'pe you yourselves know. 

 Its songs are your songs, also because "home songs" are a conmiou 

 heritage and because there is no life so well forward that it has no 

 need of a heritage of home songs we spend the remainder of our 

 evening together talking of and singing songs that live in our hearts 

 as though we were all one large family, looking backward together, 

 looking forward together. 



Back in Wisconsin is an old home where six grown children go 

 as often as they cau. It has been my habit, as one of the six chil- 

 dren, to go at Christmas time, and before the two weeks vacation is 

 over, invariably I find the little chest by the piano side, and that 

 chest is indeed a center round which the family gather. Father and 

 mother were pioneers and they could not carry with them mahogany 

 treasures and the silver and linens from back East. They took just 

 the least possible as pioneers. And yet the children have a heritage, 

 and I would not have it other than it is. The family treasure is 

 the contents of that little chest. Very meager would that little 

 treasure-chest be in some people's eyes; to mine it is invaluable. It 

 contains the old home songs. 



1 want to say to-night that if you have the same kind of riches, 

 then you have in your mind a great number of songs that are in- 

 creasingly dear to you. They are the songs of your boyhood and 

 your girlhood, and particularly the songs that you learned in and 

 about your own old home. Now I would not say: "Don't sing this, 

 and that," and suggest nothing of substitution. As workers and 

 leaders you do not need to be taught, but perhaps you do need 

 to be called to sharp account for a thing you know so well and 

 perhaps do not do. So let us gather up some songs, some old songs, 

 types of the world's "songs that live." If you will, we shall go 

 together across to the countries that are older, and get some of their 

 songs for yard-sticks, and then we will hold our own songs by them 

 and see how they will measure up. 



Let us go direct to the places where much of our blood comes 

 from, represented here to-night. I have had a great deal of interest 

 in looking up how many Scotch and Irish there are between New 

 York and the Mississippi, and the percentage runs high. Twenty- 

 two per cent, of the families are to a considerable degree Scotch- 

 Irish ; some are Scotch and some are Irish, and so we will go to the 

 countries where Scotch-Irish blood comes from, and we will get some 

 of their songs as legitimate song standards for our own country. 

 The first thing I heard, crossing on the boat that took me north 

 was a song that reminded me that the Irish people are a home- 

 seeking, home-loving people. Oh, they are jolly on this side, and 

 they are known as jokers and the men and women sometimes do the 

 heavy work, and sometimes they do the politics (and perhaps that 

 is heavy), and then sometimes they do the kind of thing that brings 

 us up sharply: they do the thing that is so genuine that our hearts run 

 right out, and that is the Irish song. The Irish song that I have 

 in mind was sung by a boatload of Irish folks going home, going 

 back to Ireland. I had first heard the old song years ago; every- 

 body in the steerage knew it and they all joined in. I will sing a 



