To serve as a little boat upon the water. To pass from one bank to the other Those who go to hunt at Plourivo. Those who go to hunt at Plourivo, The rabbit, the fox and the wild duck. As has been said, the chief value of folk-song is in its genuineness, in the accuracy with which it reflects not only the emotions, but the habits and customs of the people, so that their peculiar life becomes visible before our eyes. There is an indefinable charm, not only in the impression of reality, but in the very rudeness and imperfection of the speech, which gives an effect beyond literary art, when deep emotion or domestic pathos are seen through it. We seem to get nearer the primitive heart of mankind than under the effect of the most accomplished literary skill, and there are awakened the homely and tender feelings which lie deep within our nature. The genuine fairy tale created by the vivid and credulous imagination of the uncultivated mind, and the genuine folk-song, the outburst of simple and natural emotion, take a hold upon even the most cultivated intellects as the highest literary art fails to do. The folk-songs of Brittany have this charm as well as their own peculiar provincial flavor; and the very crudeness and imperfection of the Sonniou in M. Luzel's collection have more power than all the elaborate poetry and picturesqueness of M. Yillemarque's Celtic fabrications. THE FOLK-SONGS OF POITOU. |While there is much that is common in the folk-songs of all the provinces of France, the same stories and the same turns of expression, showing, if not a common origin, a very wide and thorough intercommunication,--as, for instance, in the beautiful and pathetic ballad of Jean Renaud, which is found almost everywhere in slightly differing variants,--each section has its own local peculiarities illustrating the temperament and the origin of the people.