tions, in which both the memory and the
imagination of a race were engaged, and which were still living in
the mouths of the people, "of themselves took on poetic form," he is
using language which is too general to convey a definite impression
of method, but he is probably suggesting the deepest truth with
regard to these popular stories. They actually were of community
origin; they actually were common property; they were given a great
variety of forms by a great number of persons; the forms which have
come down to us are very likely the survivors of a kind of in formal
competition, which went on for years at the fireside and at the
festivals of a whole country side.

Barger, whose "Lenore" is one of the most widely known of modern
ballads, held the same view of the origin of popular song, and was
even more definite in his confession of faith than Herder. He
declared in the most uncompromising terms that all real poetry must
have a popular origin; "can be and must be of the people, for that is
the seal of its perfection." And he comments on the delight with
which he has listened, in village street and home, to unwritten
songs; the poetry which finds its way in quiet rivulets to the
remotest peasant home. In like manner, Helene Vacaresco overheard the
songs of the Roumanian people; hiding in the maize to catch the
reaping songs; listening at spinning parties, at festivals, at
death-beds, at taverns; taking the songs down from the lips of peasant
women, fortune-tellers, gypsies, and all manner of humble folk who were
the custodians of this vagrant community verse. We have passed so
entirely out of the song-making period, and literature has become to us
so exclusively the work of a professional class, that we find it
difficult to imagine the intellectual and social conditions which
fostered improvisation on a great scale, and trained the ear of great
populations to the music of spoken poetry. It is almost impossible for
us to disassociate literature from writing. There is still, however, a
considerable volume of unwritten literature in the world in the form of
stories, songs, proverbs, and pithy phrases; a literature handed down in
large part from earlier times, but still receiving additions from
contemporary men and women.

This unwritten literature is to be found, it is hardly necessary to
say, almost exclusively among country people remote from towns, and
whose mental attitude and community feeling reproduce,