At the end of the sixteenth century the folk-songs of France, like those of England, were still largely in the modal scales. But this was not in imitation of ecclesiastical music. Folk-songs have borrowed very little from church music, in any age, while the debt on the other side is enormous. The modal character of the early folk-songs is proper to them and extends back far into the early morning of music. If church and folk-music were similar in their scales, it is rather because they arose from a common stock. Certainly the songs of early France were thoroughly of their own and not of any borrowed character. But the universal trend toward a standard major scale and a tonic centre was felt in France as in other countries, and by the end of the sixteenth century was well developed. The folk-tunes of the time were vigorous in the extreme, probably as little like the dainty and restrained songs of modern France as the stolid songs of nineteenth century England were like the Elizabethan songs, with their abounding energy. The Lutheran movement in music, which adapted folk-tunes as settings to devotional hymns, found an exact parallel in France as early as 1539, when Marot translated the psalms into metrical form in the vulgar tongue and set them to the songs of the street. The settings instantly became popular. It is said that the court, being fascinated with the freshness of the songs, became thereby more familiar with scripture than it had been for many a year. The strict church party violently disapproved of the practice and issued its own set of rival songs to stem the tide of popularity, but even these, which were obliged to be popular in character, only added to the vogue of the street-tune settings. In the following century the same thing happened in the political field. The Cardinal Mazarin, who was immensely unpopular among the people, was made the butt of endless satires in verse set to tunes which everybody knew. No fewer than four thousand of these ‘Mazarinades’ were later collected and published.