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The type, however, which lies nearest the definition of folk-song, as understood by the modern expert, is a song born of the people and used by the people—practically exclusively used by them before being noted down by collectors and placed before a different class of singers. To pursue the subject further one might split straws over the word “people,” but it may be generally accepted that “the people,” in this instance, stands for a stratum of society where education of a literary kind is, in a greater or lesser degree, absent.

This last definition of folk-song, as “song and melody born of the people and used by the people as an expression of their emotions, and (as in the case of historical ballads) for lyrical narrative,” is the one adopted in these pages and that generally recognised by the chief collectors and by the Folk-Song Society. In addition it may be mentioned that folk-song is practically almost always traditional, so far as its melody is concerned, and, like all traditional lore, subject to corruption and alteration. Also, that we have no definite knowledge of its original birth, and frequently but a very vague idea as to its period.