[wood] footnotes to CANADIAN FOLKSONGS 89 



The Comjylahite ^' is nearer to modern poetry in that its nausical 

 accomiDaniment is often only a sort of intoning, and its action is no more 

 than any good reciter would make use of And yet it ai-ose in the Middle 

 Ages, when music, action and verse were inseparably connected in the 

 folksong. But its origin was different from that of the ordinary folk- 

 song ; it was often a reshaping, in pithier verse, of the interminable 

 chanson de geste, which was a transformation of the cantiUne, which, 

 in its turn, occupied a somewhat anomalous place between the epic and 

 the legendary lay. Above all, it is a narrative, and, though nearly always 

 on a pious or a tragic theme, is not at all the same thing as a lament or 

 elegy. In the pious vein, Mr. Gagnon gives us^' the admirable Com- 

 plainte d'Adam et d'Eve, which is the line Canadian variant of the folk- 

 song story of the fall of man. We may compare it with a Provençal 

 version, Leis gracis des meissouniers,*'' and trace its descent from the 

 ■cantilèîie by noting its affinities with the rhymed legends of Jésus- 

 Christ et les deux hôtesses, Marie Magdeleine, Sainte-Marguerite, the 

 Complaiîite des trois petits enfants, or that of SaiM-Nicolasf In the 

 tragic vein, the verse more nearly approaches the ballad form, but the 

 music still keeps the tone of a higher seriousness. No doubt it is partly 

 owing to the serious tone of its dii-ect narrative style that it has kept its 

 traditional form so long ; but it is certainly still more owing to the simple 

 austerity of its musical accompaniment that, even in far-off Canada, 

 Marianson, dame Jolie,** is still an old-world complainte sung with all the 



Stretched metre of an antique song. 



It is a somewhat rough-and-ready way of classifying folksongs to 

 simjDly group them together as complaintes, as ballads, or as what, for 

 want of a generic name for the simpler forms, we might call folk-ditties ; 

 but, as I shall note any peculiarities in individual examples as they occur 

 in the course of our inquiries, this grouping may be sufficiently exact for 

 a general survey. As a matter of fact, too, any attempt to explore the 

 maze of by-paths and cross-roads in a hurr}' would certainly lead us, 

 more often than not, into places where we could not see the wood for the 

 trees, 



IV. 



Manners and Customs. 



In all times aud places the folk have found a pleasant escape from the 

 dulness of the daily round by singing at their work. In Russia they sing 

 as they sew at the " besyedy " of a winter's evening ; *' in Roumania the 

 best singer stands in the middle of the circle of spinners, the rest joining 

 in the chorus ; *"' in Flanders — at Bruges, Steenvoorde and other towns — 

 the lacemakers have songs called tellingen, which serve the double pui'- 

 pose of helping on the work and keeping tally of the number of meshes 



