Truthfulness to facts--this is what the brothers Grimm claimed for folk-lore. Goethe ascribes to it truthfulness to art. ‘The unsophisticated man,’ he writes, ‘is more the master of direct, effective expression in few words than he who has received a regular literary education.’ The observation has been made hundreds of times by competent judges. The simple mind has a wonderful power of seeing the essential in a thing and expressing it briefly and exactly. To have command over expression in the simplest terms--is this not the beginning of art? This power which is revealed by folk-poetry is also revealed by folk-music. The people’s melodies have the same ‘direct, effective expression’ in a few notes that Goethe noticed in their poetry. As truly as the greatest composers, folk-songs can say universal things in a few notes. Beethoven may have equalled, but he never surpassed, the ‘direct, effective expression’ of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ The majesty of this song can hardly be equalled in the whole of musical literature. Many people have noticed the peculiar effect of the refrain which makes it seem as though a mighty and harmonious orchestra of trumpets and trombones were joining in the chorus. And this with a melody denuded of every merely decorative tone, written in a scale of just five notes! Everywhere in folk-music we find this power of expressing the highest things in the fewest notes. Only the very greatest of conscious composers have been able to compete with the folk-song on its own terms, within its rigid limitations. Art-songs have elaborated and refined. But it seems as though the _essence_ is always in the folk-tunes. Like the popular stories that furnished plots to the old dramatists, these melodies have supplied the simple musical resources which conscious composers have developed. Every sort of emotion is expressed in the folk-songs, every degree of passion, every quality of mood--provided only it is human, common to all men. Do not think that folk-songs are an affair of the past, a subject for the archeologist. One is inclined to think that it is so among Anglo-Saxon people, especially in America. But folk-songs are not only sung this moment in many a land, but are yet living and growing in more than one country. The quantity of very recent Italian folk-songs is enormous. Every year, at the fair of Piedegrotta, near Naples, the popular singers of the city stand on a cart and sing the songs they have composed in the past months. For hours these concerts continue, the crowd moving from one singer to another. The songs are caught up and sung by the listeners. At the end of the festival no vote is taken, but everyone knows which song has been the winner in the competition. It is being sung from one end of the city to the other. And the successful songs of the year’s festival pass into folk-music of the people.