'Folk-songs are echoes of the heart-beats of the vast folk and in them are preserved feelings, beliefs and habits of vast antiquity. Not only in the words, which have almost monopolized folk-song study so far, but also in music and perhaps more truthfully in the music than in the words. Music cannot lie, for the reason that the things which are at its base, the things without which it could not be, are unconscious, involitional human products.'[61] It is evident that unless we understand or feel 'the things which are at its base' we cannot respond to the utterances that express them. If for no other reason, the songs of the Indian, because they express the emotions of man at a lower and totally foreign stage of culture, cannot enter into assimilation, with our own. They are therefore not significant to Americans as folk-songs and we have accordingly treated them under the heading of Primitive Music in Volume I (pp. 1 ff.). With the Indian rejected as a source of folk-song where are we to find such sources? Folk-songs, according to a dictionary definition, are 'marked by certain peculiarities of rhythm, form, and melody, which are traceable, more or less clearly, to racial (or national) temperament, modes of life, climatic and political conditions, geographical environment and language.' The distinction of one kind of folk-song from another therefore depends upon a difference in these peculiarities, and we shall have to look for distinctive characteristics that belong to no other race if we are to find a truly indigenous folk-song. On the other hand, the _conditions_ under which folk-song grows (for it does 'grow' while its sophisticated counterpart is 'built') are essentially the same. The proverbial dictum that 'sorrow is the mother of song' is true as a general rule. It is borne out by the fact that a great majority of the folk-songs of all nations carry a note of melancholy, and a great preponderance of all such songs is in the minor mode. But this is particularly so in Northern countries. No doubt the harsher climatic conditions impose a heavier burden of care. Mr. Krehbiel, who has examined many folk-songs with regard to the relative proportion of modes, remarks that nearly all of Russian song shows the minor predominance peculiar to Northern countries, and he concludes that political conditions have much the same effect as climatic ones.