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We have even taken to our hearts tunes of other nationalities, and perhaps have more French airs among our popular music than of any other country. As every student of national song knows, “We won’t go home till morning” is but “Malbrook,” the favourite of Marie Antoinette, who learned it from the peasant woman called in to nurse her first child. “Ah vous dirai je” is known as “Baa baa black sheep” in every nursery, while “In my cottage near a wood” is a literal translation from an old French song to its proper tune.

Such of these, or of this class, as are not folk-tunes have the same spirit, and it is this indefinable quality that causes folk-music to be so tenacious of existence. If it be good enough it is almost impossible for it to die and be totally forgotten. A tune may lie dormant for half a century, but it rises again and has its period of renewed popularity. One might name many a music-hall air, over which the people have for a period gone half wild, that is merely a resuscitation of a tune that has pleased a former generation. Thus such airs pass through strata of widely differing thought and mode of life.