Song and dance entered largely into the life of mediæval German villages and towns. When village communities depended upon their own resources for work and play, every village had its own musicians. The peasant boys usually played the fiddle, the shepherds the _Schalmey_, while the flute was hardly less popular. In the towns there were several functionaries identified with certain forms of song. The watchman on the town wall (_Türmer_) was blowing a tune on his horn; the 'wait’ or _Nachtwächter_ admonished the people to observe the curfew hour and repair for the night; and, when the _Postillon_ or courier came through the gates with clatter of hoofs and cracking of whips, the rousing notes of his horn brought young and old into the street to greet the bringer of news. The smallest community had its 'town piper.’ There was no festivity without song or dance, and the instrumentalist playing for the dance was accompanied by a precentor for the singing and a leader for the steps. The great variety of occupations and pastimes accompanied by song and dance made for a great variety of folk tunes. From this folk song of mediæval Germany, dealing with the realities of life in their manifold manifestations, one could almost reconstruct the whole life of the race, its history, beliefs, superstitions, activities, social and domestic customs, its intimate domestic relations and its important public functions. The _Tage_, _Leichen_, _Tanz_, _Spruch_, _Zauber_, and _Wünschelieder_, the harvest, spinning, soldiers’, and other trade and labor songs are a musical commentary as illuminating to the historian as any other relics of the past. * * * * *