In the very brief survey which we shall make of folk-songs as the student finds them to his hand to-day we shall be able to do no more than suggest the national characteristics of each group. Anything like a list of the fine songs of each nation, or an adequate appreciation of its popular music, would be impossible in less than a volume. Likewise, all the interesting questions of racial characteristics as affecting art, of technical development and international interchange, of æsthetic theory and melodic analysis, must be left quite to one side until there shall be written the adequate book on folk-music which as yet does not exist in the English language. The present chapter attempts only to suggest the contrasting characteristics of the different folk-song traditions and the amazing extent of the treasure which has until so recently remained for the most part unknown, or known only to be snubbed. II England, Scotland, and Ireland, now grouped together as the tiniest part only, geographically speaking, of the British Empire, were in early times as distinct and as antagonistic, nationally, as Germany and France are to-day. The lack of means of communication and social organization made it possible for very different social and artistic traditions to flourish independently within a few miles of each other. Thus there grew up in these countries highly distinct musical traditions which have preserved their individuality even through these days of printing presses and phonographs. Each of these musical traditions--the English, the Scotch, and the Irish--had its roots in the earliest times of which we have any record. And it is evident that the musical life of these countries was vigorous in the extreme. The beauty and individuality of the Scotch and Irish songs are familiar, but it has been accepted as axiomatic until recently that England was an unmusical nation--that she had neither the geniuses to create nor the people to appreciate the finest and sincerest musical beauty. Especially it was supposed that she had no truly creative folk-song. Certainly it is true that England for centuries stifled her folk-song, keeping it among the peasant classes, dumb and suppressed, where Germany coaxed hers upward to illumine and inspire the whole nation to great deeds. Recent investigators, notably Mr. Cecil Sharp, have unearthed in Somersetshire and elsewhere a great wealth of popular songs, most of them never before set on paper, but many of them showing great antiquity and distinctive beauty. This folk-art existed for centuries among the almost unlettered classes without the nation as a whole being aware of the fact. Now that the songs have been noted down and published it can never again be said that England, in the roots of her, is unmusical or uncreative in popular song. These songs, which are all the more charming for never having felt the influence of learned