Excerpt from English Traditional Songs and Carols: Collected and Edited, With Annotations and Pianoforte AccompanimentsThe strength of traditional melodies is indeed almost undeniable. Originally the perfectly sincere expression of some musical soul, they have passed on from father to son, receiving the impress of simple music-lovers unaccustomed to harmony, and therefore the more critically alive to the essentials of fine melody.It should not surprise us that the weakness of folk-song is most often apparent in its verse. A child will sing before it can speak. To compose a noble melody without harmony needs no teacher; whereas the invention of good poetry presupposes a varied vocabulary, a knowledge of grammar and the rules of rhyme and rhythm, and, above all, that habit of eloquence in daily speech and thought bred solely of familiarity with books. And books, even in their simplest form, were often unknown to the country dwellers through whom these old songs have descended.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.