The Spanish songs are much less known than they deserve. Of Spain, as of England, it can be said that its folk-songs are its chief musical contribution. The pure folk-song of Spain, given to the world chiefly through the researches of the composer Albéniz, is highly sectional and local, primitive, almost untouched by the traditions of the great world of music. Just across this low range of mountains there may be another quite different type of song, with different scales and different rhythms and a different type of emotional utterance corresponding to the sectional variation of temperament. In addition to this pure folk-song there is an extensive Spanish folk-music which is somewhat more sophisticated and much better known. It is this class that chiefly contains the wonderful dance-tunes which we associate with Spain--for here rhythm is cultivated as nowhere else in the world. The chief rhythms--those of the _Habañera_, the _Seguidilla_, the _Bolero_, the _Fandango_, and the rest--have in the Spanish songs a poignancy which it is impossible to analyze. The melodies seem built on and for the rhythms. Both may seem simple and literal, yet there is a peculiar fitness in this simplicity which is ever the mark of the folk-genius, and which in this case gives the rhythms an unbelievable quantity of physical drive. The chief geographical and political sections of Spain have preserved their individuality in their folk-songs. The Castilian song is light and sparkling. The Catalonian is sombre and intense. The Andalusian is sensuous and passionate. In the singing of all these songs there is scarcely a trace of the intellectual factor. They are to be sung in a sort of divine frenzy. It is not too much to say that they must be sung with the whole physical body. For their powerful rhythm must be felt in every nerve and muscle, else it cannot be expressed in the voice. Of all songs these of Spain demand the most of the merely physical--of bone and nerves and muscles. IV