so ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



times approach the other. A lonely lyric may be born in an unhappy 

 time, perhaps during an exile shared by many beside its single singer, 

 and then.— so sweet are the uses of adversity in the realm of song — all the 

 exiles will adopt it, cradle it in their sorrow, and bring it home at last as 

 tlieir very own : Avho has not heard and laid to heart the song of 



Un Canadien errant, 

 Banni de ses foyers ? •' 



But this is an exception which proves the rule. 



The Vaudeville, that product of the bourgeois versifier and joy of 

 the bourgeois heart, is, in France, the greatest enemy the folksong has 

 to fear. It has no recognized place in Mr. Gagnou's book and is not yet 

 a power in Canada ; but it is not likely that the inter-communication 

 between town and country and the exodus to the United States can go 

 on much longer without profoundly affecting French-Canadian popular 

 life and song. If only the vaudeville and its offshoots were entirely 

 products of the bourgeois wit, they would not be half so dangerous as 

 they are ; but, whilst all is fish that comes to their net — political and 

 historical songs, the poetry of the day, love-songs and drawing-room 

 ditties, together with parodies of psalms, hymns and all sorts of religious 

 verse— their choicest quariy has usually been the words of a folksong 

 and the air of a popular dance. It is to such an origin that many vaude- 

 villes owe their tremendous vogue : like the Janissaries the folksong is 

 kidnapped from its early home, reared among the aliens, and finall}' sent 

 back to destroy its own kin. 



The N^oël^" is another strictl}' non-popular form. It is, at best, an 

 adaptation, composed under the direct or indirect influence of the priest- 

 hood, and made up of the most heterogeneous materials. Some noels are 

 simply versified accounts of the birth of Christ and are almost entirely of 

 Christian origin ; the beautiful one given by Mr. Gagnon is of this nature 

 and is a remarkable example of the fusion of the noel and folksong into 

 a real poem. But most are composed of Avhatever was handiest to the 

 adapter : so Ave find noels derived from folksongs, t\'om Christian hymns 

 and Pagan formula), from vaudevilles, from love-songs, from drinking- 

 songs, from rounds and rhymes for dancing, from fairy-tales, hero-tales 

 and drolls, from mystery-plays,^ and from events of real history. All 

 doubtless contain popular elements — the dramatic element, for instance, 

 which they borrowed from the folksong, usually by way of the median-al 

 mysteries, fêtes des fous and fetes de /!' âne ; but they are not themselves 

 popular, because they never came directly from the lore of the folk itself. 

 Their popularity in Provence proves nothing, for the Provençal noel 

 is most popular when it is least essentially a true noel. A convinc- 

 ing proof of their non-popular character is the well-known fact, that, 

 from the sixteenth century on, they have been so common in printed col- 



