We must also mention that great class of songs which are not strictly folk-songs at all, but deserve to rank as folk-songs by every title except the technical one. They are those songs written by conscious composers, published and sold, but intended for wide circulation and great popularity--those, in short, which by their simplicity and genuineness evoke a human response similar to that evoked by true folk-songs. Such are the immortal songs of Stephen Foster in America--‘My Old Kentucky Home,’ ‘Old Black Joe,’ and the rest. Such is ‘Annie Laurie,’ one of the most beautiful of melodies. And such are the German songs of Silcher--_Die Lorelei_, _Scheiden_, and many others. Nearly all these composers have been without aptitude in the larger musical forms--often persons of little education and culture. Very few great composers have succeeded in thus writing folk-songs. Weber, of all of them, is the nearest to the folk-spirit, and the slow movement of Agathe’s aria, _Leise, leise_, from _Der Freischütz_, is now a permanent folk-song with the best of them. Schubert’s _Lindenbaum_ and _Heidenröslein_ have the same quality. Mendelssohn is a folk-composer by virtue of his song _Es ist bestimmt_ in _Gottes Rath_. But in general it has seemed next to impossible for a conscious and highly trained composer to catch the spirit of the folk in simplest terms. The most available folk-music for the average student is that which is freely arranged and edited by a man whose name is a guarantee of honest and musicianly work--such a man as Weckerlin, collector and editor of French songs from the earliest to the most recent; or Cecil Sharp, collector of forgotten songs in Somersetshire, England. Such an editor may keep the songs intact or may vary them, may adopt some one else’s accompaniment or write one of his own, but he will always do it intelligently, altering only what it is reasonably necessary to alter, and keeping always true to the spirit, if not to the letter, of the original. It should be borne in mind that the songs to be described in the following pages are, many of them, sung quite spontaneously and naturally to-day by the peasants and unsophisticated people of the various countries. The writer, while crossing the ocean, once listened for hours to the Dutch steerage passengers amusing themselves with songs and dances. And he recognized among the songs the famous ‘William of Nassau,’ probably centuries old. Thus simple people in European countries are constantly singing enduring masterpieces of music along with much, of course, that is ephemeral.