In general, of course, the question of the age or authenticity of a folk-song is one for the musical archeologist, rather than for the mere lover of music. The folk-songs that are in the hands of the general public are in all stages of authenticity and purity. There was a time when no publisher who knew his business would think of publishing a folk-song in its true form. It was barbarous, not fit for the graces of the drawing-room. So some composer of the fashion (or, failing such, some hack) was hired to ‘arrange’ them and to supply an accompaniment in approved style. And, naturally, under such a régime it was not the most characteristic of a country’s folk-songs that were chosen, but those most similar to polite music--that is, the least characteristic. Often the songs had been transcribed by little-trained listeners or else not transcribed at all, but only imperfectly remembered. There was little of the national essence left in such music. And the composers of the day discovered the fact and turned it to their account. Why go to Sicily to pick up folk-songs when Sicilian folk-songs can be written without stirring out of your study in London? And this is precisely what Sir Henry Bishop, for instance, did. And it is to such a hoax that we owe the tune of ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ which was at first published in a book of alleged Sicilian songs ‘edited’ by Bishop, few, if any, of which were genuine. These days, however, are past. The modern attitude toward folk-songs is one of respect, almost of reverence. The greatest of pains have been taken to preserve the songs as they were actually sung, ‘mistakes’ and all. No tune of two notes is too slight to be worth the trouble of accurate transcription. Especially since the invention of the phonograph the scientific study of folk-songs has prospered. Thousands upon thousands of songs have been taken down by the phonograph among the Indians of North America, the negroes of Africa, and the Russians of the Caucasus. The results, it is true, are likely to be regarded as scientific--ethnological or psychological--data rather than as artistic entities. But the tunes are accessible to musicians and often appear in the art music of the time--as we well know from Russian symphonies or even from Charles Wakefield Cadman’s interesting arrangements of Indian lyrics. And the value of the accurate transcriptions as data for scientific æsthetic theory cannot be overestimated.