[wood] F00TN0ÏP:S to CANADIAN FOLKSONGS 83 



song is often so vividly dnimaiic. yet without showing the least touch of 

 self-consciousness. There is neither the desire nor the opportunity for 

 an artificial pose. The Grimms declared that in the whole range of folk- 

 song they had never found a single lie ; and, indeed, there is no folksinger 

 who, if asked the reason of his singing, could not truly answer in the 

 words of Goethe's minstrel 



Ich singe wie der Vogel singt, 

 Der in den Zvveigen wohnet ; 

 Das Lied, das aus dei Kehle dringt, 

 1st Lohn das reichlich lohnet ! 



It is this very truth to life that gives the note of melancholy. 

 Children know this well, and, when they want to be amused, never ask 

 you to sing them songs, but to tell them stories ; for in the folktale the 

 hero and heroine, after the fearful joy of wonderful adventures, generally 

 get married and live happily ever after ; whereas in verse they are more 

 often united only by death : the folksong is, indeed, a " melancholy 

 strain." "Songs are the words spoken by those that suffer," says a 

 Greek folksinger in words of which Shelley's " Our sweetest songs are 

 those that tell of saddest thought" seem like a literary paraphrase. If 

 the folk cultivate poetry as a gay science in any tongue at all, it is in the 

 French, and, if French folksongs are sung with a lighter heart in any 

 one land more than in another, they are so sung in Canada. Yet, Mr. 

 Gagnon has to quote the Grimms' dictum in prefacing the wedding-song 

 A la santé de ces jeunes Mariés ; and he is certainly justified in doing 

 so, Avhilst drawing our attention at the same time to another true saying, 

 "La crainte est de toutes les fêtes," for we find these words in the very 

 middle of the toast, 



Je puis bien parler 



De tous ceux et celles 



Qui se prennent sans s'aimer 



Et nieur'nt sans se regretter.-" 



In another place -* he gives us the rollicking song of the Trois Capi- 

 taines , who are going off to the tavern on their return from the war. 

 This is an occasion of more certain jollity than even a marriage-feast, and 

 the verses certainly have the ring of jollity in them ; but the air to which 

 they are sung is anything but gay. "Pourquoi ces couplets si gais se 

 chantent-ils dans le mode mineur ? " asks Mr. Gagnon. and quotes 

 Chateaubriand for the answer : " dans tous les pays le chant naturel de 

 l'homme est triste ; lors même qu'il exprime le bonheur." When Brizeux 

 wrote the following lines he was thinking only of his own romantic part 

 of France, but I would lilce to quote them here as they seem to me 

 almost equally applicable to our Canada — 



Hélas ! je sais un chant d'amour 

 Triste ou gai tour à tour. 



Cette chanson, douce à l'oreille, 

 Pour le cceur n'a point sa pareille. 



