POPULAR SONGS. 415 



withstanding the modem dialect in which they are expressed, may be readily 

 understood when one hears the Berry peasants driving their oxen to an 

 unintelligible air interspersed with Latin words, such as I bos and Sta bos; and 

 so, again, in several popular songs in the Chartrain and Auvergne districts 

 there occurs the refrain la (jitillone and la guillona, which is no other thiin 

 the song of Gallic origin terminating with the words Gtii fan neu, and which 

 long survived the Druidic ceremonies. 



The various races of men settled in Europe, and the various countries 

 which make up that continent, formerly possessed their own popular songs, 

 and they were anxious to preserve them as records of their nationality, for 



Fig. 326. Minnesingers. Poesies des Minnesingers. Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century. 



In the National Library, Paris. 



these popular songs were, in fact, the native expression of the character of the 

 nation which produced them. An effort is now being made to collect them, for 

 they are the rarest and most interesting documents of the history of peoples. 

 In Germany, whose national songs had already been collected by Charle- 

 magne, there appeared in the twelfth century a series of long poems, 

 derived from them, which made up the splendid epode known as "Niebe- 

 lungen." The German poets then created a new branch of songs, which were 

 destined by their very characteristics to become popular, but which must not, 

 with a few exceptions, be looked upon as works emanating from the people 

 themselves. The Minnesingers (or singers of love-songs), who composed a 



