278 A BRETON FOLK-SONG 
The most perfect example I have heard, in any 
language, was a Breton folk-song: and here again, 
as in Auld Robin Gray, we go back to the early 
stages of art, and are nearest to the primitive. The 
singer was a Breton peasant, an immigrant in South 
America who had drifted out to the Argentine frontier 
and was a hired hand of a brother of mine at his 
ranch in the wilderness. He was a young man with 
a good voice, and the song is the lament of a young 
girl in a decline who knows that her life must shortly 
end. She is standing among the trees on a sunny 
autumn day watching the yellow leaves fluttering in 
the wind and falling all around her. It is her good- 
bye to nature and her life on earth, for she will no 
more see the yellowing leaves in the autumn nor 
spring when it returns to earth with bud and flower 
and the songs of birds. And here, as in Auld Robin 
Gray, the melody and all the words express are one; 
but it is better, since the passion is plangent and 
the melody varies with the feeling, until, at its height, 
it is a cry of exquisite anguish at the thought of all 
the sweetness and beauty of life so quickly lost, then 
sinks again to sadness, to mournful resignation and 
a vague hope. 
This little song of a peasant haunted my mind for 
days; nevertheless, I could not have said that it was 
good of its kind, being mistrustful of my judgment 
in such matters, had it not been that my brother, 
who was a lover of music, with a knowledge of it 
which I have never possessed, was affected in the 
same way. It haunted his mind as it haunted mine. 
