The French folk-song more than any other has contained from early times the spirit of its conscious art. Or perhaps France’s conscious art has, more than in most countries, been true to the genius of its people as revealed in its folk-art. Its melodies are rarely rich and luscious--rarely even emotional in the more strenuous sense of the term. Often they seem, at first hearing, to be cold and thin. But such a view is, of course, false. The French melodies have both emotion and sensuous beauty. But it is in the famous French ‘taste’ not to shout one’s message to the heavens. You do not appreciate the meaning of these melodies until you have come to know and love them, just as you do not appreciate the meaning of a child until you have come to know and love him. You must be on the alert, sensitive to catch the meaning of a whisper or a gesture. And, in addition to the meaning, you must learn to love the formal beauty of a French melody. No nation has carried perfection of form, even in the smallest things, to such a pitch as the French. The opening phrase of a French folk-tune may seem almost meaningless and pointless. But somewhere in it there is a suggestion of something distinctive in it. Watch for this, then follow it out in the other phrases--a gentle contrast, a delicate indiscretion, a comforting restatement. In some moods we shall find this whispered statement more stimulating, more thrilling than any burst of Italian passion. As early as the fifteenth century we have French songs which show these qualities of restraint and delicate design. Of such we may instance _Sy je perdoys mon amy_ and _Vray Dieu d’amours_. As we come to later centuries we find a host of songs (collected in great numbers by Weckerlin) which are scarcely to be distinguished from the simple songs of the great French composers. The delightful _chanson_, _O, ma tendre Musette_, is accredited to Monsigny, but it is an open question whether the melody was not taken by him bodily from a folk-tune. Many are the _villanelles_ and _musettes_ which are of folk origin. In no other country are the folk-music and the art-music less distinct. A few French songs, like _Le pauvre laboureur_, show the freedom and irregularity of phrase which betoken a development independent of art-music. This particular song is almost unrhythmical, probably a development from one or two stereotyped phrases, like the street-cries of Paris and of some of the Italian cities. But irregular songs are unusual. The French popular genius seems to have the same sense for design that has made the great men of France distinguished, and this sense is shown almost universally in its songs. (See Appendix for French-Canadian Folk-song.)