It is nearly twenty-five years since M. Bourgault-Ducoudray, who was one of the people who fostered the growth of choral singing in France, pointed out, in an account of the teaching of singing, the usefulness of making children sing the old popular airs of the French provinces, and of getting the teachers to make collections of them.  In 1895, as the result of a meeting organised by the Correspondance generale de l’Instruction primaire, delightful collections of folk-songs were distributed in the schools.  The melodies were taken from old airs collected by M. Julien Tiersot, and M. Maurice Buchor had put some fresh and sparkling verses to them.  “M.  Buchor,” I wrote at the time, “will enjoy a pleasure not common to poets of our day:  his songs will soar up into the open air, like the lark in his Chanson de labour.  The populace may even recognise its own spirit in them, and one day take possession of them, as if they were of their own contriving."[244] This prediction has been almost completely realised, and M. Buchor’s songs are now the property of all the people of France.

[Footnote 244:  Taken from the Supplement a la Correspondance generale de l’Instruction primaire, 15 December, 1894.]

But M. Buchor did not remain content to be a poet of popular song.  During the last twelve years he has made, with untiring energy, a tour of all the Ecoles Normales in France, returning several times to places where he found signs of good vocal ability.  In each school he made the pupils sing his songs—­in unison, or in two or three parts, sometimes massing the boys’ and girls’ schools of one town together.  His ambition grew with his success; and to the folk-song melodies[245] he began gradually to add pieces of classical music.  And to impress the music better on the singers he changed the existing words, and tried to find others, which by their moral and poetic beauty more exactly translated the musical feeling.[246]

[Footnote 245:  Three series of these Chants populaires pour les Ecoles have already been published.]

[Footnote 246:  I reserve my opinion, from an artist’s point of view, on this plagiarising of the words of songs.  On principle I condemn it absolutely.  But, in this case, it is Hobson’s choice. Primum vivere, deinde philosophari.  If our contemporary musicians really wished the people to sing, they would have written songs for them; but they seem to have no desire to achieve honour that way.  So there is nothing else to be done but to have recourse to the musicians of other days; and even there the choice is very limited.  For France formerly, like the France of to-day, had very few musicians who had any understanding of a great popular art.  Berlioz came nearest to understanding the meaning of it; and he is not yet public property, so his airs cannot be used.  It is curious, and rather sad, that out of eighty pieces chosen by M. Buchor only nine of them are French; and this is reckoning