in spring or summer, nor when grapes are gleaned in autumn,
can warrior or maiden escape," is likewise pre-Christian. In Provencal and
Danish folk-song, the cries of children ill-treated by a cruel step-mother
awaken the departed mother,--

"'Twas cold at night and the bairnies grat,
The mother below the mouls heard that."

She reappears in her old home, and henceforth, "when dogs howl in the
night, the step-mother trembles, and is kind to the children." To this
identity of superstition we may add the less tangible fact of identity of
tone. The ballads of Klephtic exploits in Greece match the Border songs of
Dick of the Cow and Kinmont Willie. The same simple delight of living
animates the short Greek _Scolia_ and their counterparts in France.
Everywhere in these happier climes, as in southern Italy, there are
snatches of popular verse that make but one song of rose trees, and apple
blossom, and the nightingale that sings for maidens loverless,--

"Il ne chante pas pour moi,
J'en ai un, Dieu merci,"

says the gay French refrain.

It would not be difficult to multiply instances of resemblance between the
different folk-songs of Europe; but enough has, perhaps, been said to
support the position that some of them are popular and primitive in the
same sense as _Maerchen_. They are composed by peoples of an early stage
who find, in a natural improvisation, a natural utterance of modulated and
rhythmic speech, the appropriate relief of their emotions, in moments of
high-wrought feeling or on solemn occasions. "Poesie" (as Puttenham well
says in his _Art of English Poesie_, 1589) "is more ancient than the
artificiall of the Greeks and Latines, and used of the savage and uncivill,
who were before all science and civilitie. This is proved by certificate of
merchants and travellers, who by late navigations have surveyed the whole
world, and discovered large countries, and wild people strange and savage,
affirming that the American, the Perusine, and the very Canniball do sing
and also say their highest and holiest matters in certain riming
versicles." In the same way Aristotle, discoursing of the origin of poetry,
says (_Poet_. c. iv.), [Greek: egennesan ten poiesin ek ton
autoschediasmaton] M. de la Villemarque in Brittany, M. Pitre in Italy,
Herr Ulrich in Greece, have described the process of improvisation, how it
grows out of the custom of dancing in large bands and accompanying the
figure of the dance with song. "