In the beginning, as we have said, it is probable that everybody made songs for himself. Helen Vacaresco noted a long song improvised by a Roumanian peasant woman who was going mad; the woman was suffering under a great sorrow and was trying to express it. Being simple and without knowledge or fear of artistic forms and laws, she was able to express it. And each day she wandered in the fields singing the song she had composed, changing it little by little. It was not made for the sake of making a song, but for the sake of expressing her sorrow. It was, of course, only half a song and a half a mechanical repetition of her troubles. But it had its beauty of word and something like a set melody; it was an emotion objectified, put into a work of art where it could be looked at and known. Here was song at its very earliest beginning. It was spontaneous, it was personal, it was utterly sincere. And, because it sought some objective form, it was a primitive work of art. We may imagine the earliest songs starting in just this way. Perhaps this Roumanian peasant woman had her counterpart thousands of years ago. Her song, or part of it, was heard and imitated by others who felt the same sorrow. It was changed in passing from mouth to mouth. Needless words were dropped, weak expressions were strengthened. As men became able to look more clearly at their trouble the essential things in the song were emphasized or put in a more emphatic position. Everything was dropped from it that did not express the very heart of the emotion. The lines perhaps became more rhythmical; the verses began to balance and contrast with each other; the metaphors became more brilliant or more precise. Soon all members of the tribe knew it, and when the young men wandered away to other lands they took the song with them. At the same time a similar perfecting process was going on in the music. The original melody was perhaps little more than a chant of two or three notes, the tune rising when the emotional pitch was raised and dropping when the movement became more calm. The tune was at first not thought of as a thing in itself. But gradually people became conscious of the two or three notes in their relation and succession. And they began to make them more varied, to express the changes of emotion more accurately. The melody became divided into stanzas and lines corresponding with the words and showed in itself where the thought came to a partial stop and where it began again. Then people began to notice peculiar figures which they had unconsciously put into the melody. They made use of these, balancing or contrasting them to add beauty to the tune. And gradually the melody came to have beauty and meaning of its own.