The people of Europe, who had no other knowledge of languages than their own uncultivated dialects, seem to have possessed what, if we may so dignify it, we would call a fugitive literature of their own. It is obvious that the people could not be ignorant of the important transactions in their own land; transactions in which their fathers had been the spectators or the actors, the sons would perpetuate by their traditions; the names of their heroes had not died with them on the battle-field. Nor would the villain's subjection to the feudal lord spoil the merriment of the land, nor dull the quip of natural facetiousness. Before the people had national books they had national songs. Even at a period so obscure as the days of Charlemagne there were "_most ancient songs_, in which the acts and wars of the old kings were sung." These songs which, the secretary of Charlemagne has informed us, were sedulously collected by the command of that great monarch, are described by the secretary, according to his classical taste, as _barbara et antiquissima carmina_; "barbarous," because they were composed in the rude vernacular language; yet such was their lasting energy that they were, even in the eighth century, held to be "most ancient," so long had they dwelt in the minds, of the people! The enlightened emperor had more largely comprehended their results in the vernacular idiom, on the genius of the nation, than had the more learned and diplomatic secretary. It was an ingenious conjecture, that, possibly, even these ancient songs may in some shape have come down to us in the elder northern and Teutonic romances, and the Danish, the Swedish, the Scottish, and the English popular ballads. The kindling narrative, and the fiery exploits which entranced the imagination of Charlemagne, mutilated or disguised, may have framed the incidents of a romance, or been gathered up in the snatches of old wives' tales, and, finally, may have even lingered in the nursery.