Folk-songs differ from folk-tales by the fact of their making a more emphatic claim to credibility. Prose is allowed to be more fanciful, more frivolous than poetry. It deals with the brighter side; the hero and heroine in the folk-tale marry and live happily ever after; in the popular ballad they are but rarely united save in death. To the blithe supernaturalism of elves and fairies, the folk-poet prefers the solemn supernaturalism of ghost-lore. The folk-song probably preceded the folk-tale. If we are to judge either by early record or by the analogy of backward peoples, it seems proved that in infant communities anything that was thought worth remembering was sung. It must have been soon ascertained that words rhythmically arranged take, as a rule, firmer root than prose. "As I do not know how to read," says a modern Greek folk-singer, "I have made this story into a song so as not to forget it." Popular poetry is the reflection of moments of strong collective or individual emotion. The springs of legend and poetry issue from the deepest wells of national life; the very heart of a people is laid bare in its sagas and songs. There have been times when a profound feeling of race or patriotism has sufficed to turn a whole nation into poets: this happened at the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, the struggle for the Stuarts in Scotland, for independence in Greece. It seems likely that all popular epics were born of some such concordant thrill of emotion. The saying of "a very wise man" reported by Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, to the effect that if one were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who made the laws, must be taken with this reservation: the ballad-maker only wields his power for as long as he is the true interpreter of the popular will. Laws may be imposed on the unwilling, but not songs. The Brothers Grimm said that they had not found a single lie in folk-poetry. "The special value," wrote Goethe, "of what we call national songs and ballads, is that their inspiration comes fresh from nature: they are never got up, they flow from a sure spring." He added, what must continually strike anyone who is brought in contact with a primitive peasantry, "The unsophisticated man is more the master of direct, effective expression in few words than he who has received a regular literary education." Bards chaunted the praises of head-men and heroes, and it may be guessed that almost as soon and as universally as tribes and races fell out, it grew to be the custom for each fighting chief to have one or more bards in his personal service. Robert Wace describes how William the Conqueror was followed by Taillefer, who Mounted on steed that was swift of foot, Went forth before the armed train Singing of Roland and Charlemain, Of Olivere, and the brave vassals Who died at the Pass of Roncesvals.