The inference is irresistible that such a fragrant folk-song, if this be a folk-song, could not have existed as an isolated specimen. The few melodies of undoubted antiquity we possess demonstrate the presence of unrecognized Schuberts and Mozarts, geniuses ‘born to blush unseen,’ among the humble but inspired singers even of those far-off centuries. The devout and sincere monks who laid the formal foundations of the art of music were too much under the thraldom of authority and theory to perceive the spirit, or recognize the invaluable aid, of such free, spontaneous song in working out the problems they set themselves to solve. In many respects it was a real misfortune and a hindrance in the development of art-music that more of its early steps of progress could not have been taken under the stimulating influence of the folk-song, instead of exclusively under the influence and guidance of ecclesiasticism and the strict and deadening formalism of the early church. The oft-repeated argument that it was necessary to evolve complex musical forms before expressive musical utterance could exist, falls to the ground, shattered by a single phrase of this inspired Northumbrian lay. It would scarcely be maintained that the manufacture of carriages preceded the creation of man or that man acquired an extensive vocabulary before he became conscious of ideas surging within him for utterance. The religious thought of the monk-musicians of the early centuries was centred on forms and externals, and the character of their religious thought dominated all their mental activities. They were not ready to be led by ‘a little child’; they had no ears attuned to the ‘still, small voice’ of free-born, inspired song. The free spirit of the song, which even in remotest periods insisted on choosing its own appropriate form, did not find real lodgment in art-music until the Romanticism of the nineteenth century conclusively demonstrated the inalienable right of every musical thought to determine the nature of the musical form through which it should be expressed, unfettered by tradition or theoretical law. The growth of this principle of emancipation in music has kept pace through all the centuries with the growth of the same spirit of freedom in the individual consciousness of man. At the beginning of the twentieth century we are for the first time in the history of musical art beginning to breathe in an atmosphere of full freedom in respect to the relation of musical thought to musical form. If wild extravagances have occasionally resulted from the realization of this full freedom, they are possibly the inevitable consequences of a youthful overjoy at kicking loose from the old harness of stereotyped forms--an exuberance of feeling that the present period of necessary readjustment and orientation will temper and direct into real constructive channels. FOOTNOTES: