annot apply directly the
test of such a communal origin, we must cast about for other and more
modern conditions.

When Mr. George Saintsbury deplores "the lack, notorious to this day,
of one single original English folk-song of really great beauty,"
he leaves his readers to their own devices by way of defining this
species of poetry. Probably, however, he means the communal lyric
in survival, not the ballad, not what Germans would include under
_volkslied_ and Frenchmen under _chanson populaire_. This distinction,
so often forgotten by our critics, was laid down for English usage a
century ago by no less a person than Joseph Ritson. "With us," he
said, "songs of sentiment, expression, or even description, are
properly called Songs, in contradistinction to mere narrative
compositions, which now denominate Ballads."

Notwithstanding this lucid statement, we have failed to clear the
field of all possible causes for error. The song of the folk is
differentiated from the song of the individual poet; popular lyric is
set over against the artistic, personal lyric. But lyric is commonly
assumed to be the expression of individual emotion, and seems in its
very essence to exclude all that is not single, personal, and
conscious emotion. Professor Barrett Wendell, however, is fain to
abandon this time-honored notion of lyric as the subjective element in
poetry, the expression of individual emotion, and proposes a
definition based upon the essentially musical character of these
songs. If we adhere strictly to the older idea, communal lyric, or
folk-song, is a contradiction in terms; but as a musical expression,
direct and unreflective, of communal emotion, and as offspring of the
enthusiasm felt by a festal, dancing multitude, the term is to be
allowed. It means the lyric of a throng. Unless one feels this
objective note in a lyric, it is certainly no folk-song, but merely an
anonymous product of the schools. The artistic and individual lyric,
however sincere it may be, is fairly sure to be blended with
reflection; but such a subjective tone is foreign to communal
verse--whether narrative or purely lyrical. In other words, to study
the lyric of the people, one must banish that notion of individuality,
of reflection and sentiment, which one is accustomed to associate with
all lyrics. To illustrate the matter, it is evident that Shelley's 'O
World, O Life, O Time,' and Wordsworth's 'My Heart Leaps Up,' however
widely sundered may