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 aflFected in the 

 same way. It haunted his mind as it haunted mine. 



