father into the neighbourhood of Warsaw. His wonder always was who
could have composed the quaint and beautiful strains of those mazurkas,
polonaises, and krakowiaks, and who had taught these simple men and
women to play and sing so truly in tune. The conditions then existing
in Poland were very favourable to the study of folk-lore of any kind.
Art-music had not yet corrupted folk-music; indeed, it could hardly be
said that civilisation had affected the lower strata of society at
all. Notwithstanding the emancipation of the peasants in 1807, and the
confirmation of this law in 1815--a law which seems to have remained
for a long time and in a great measure a dead letter--the writer of an
anonymous book, published at Boston in 1834, found that the freedom of
the wretched serfs in Russian Poland was much the same as that of their
cattle, they being brought up with as little of human cultivation; nay,
that the Polish peasant, poor in every part of the country, was of all
the living creatures he had met with in this world or seen described
in books, the most wretched. From another publication we learn that the
improvements in public instruction, however much it may have benefited
the upper classes, did not affect the lowest ones: the parish schools
were insufficient, and the village schools not numerous enough. But the
peasants, although steeped in superstition and ignorance, and too much
addicted to brandy-drinking with its consequences--quarrelsomeness and
revengefulness--had not altogether lost the happier features of their
original character--hospitality, patriotism, good-naturedness, and,
above all, cheerfulness and love of song and dance. It has been said
that a simple Slavonic peasant can be enticed by his national songs
from one end of the world to the other. The delight which the Slavonic
nations take in dancing seems to be equally great. No other nation,
it has been asserted, can compare with them in ardent devotion to
this amusement. Moreover, it is noteworthy that song and dance were in
Poland--as they were of course originally everywhere--intimately
united. Heine gives a pretty description of the character of the Polish
peasant:--

It cannot be denied [he writes] that the Polish peasant has
often more head and heart than the German peasant in some
districts. Not infrequently did I find in the meanest Pole
that original wit (not Gemuthswitz, humour) which on every
occasion bubbles forth with wond