“The ordinary folk-songs of the country are called “Lavanis,” and will be familiar to every one who has heard the coolies sing as they do their work, the women nursing their children, the bullock-drivers and dooley-bearers, or Sepoys on the march. The airs are usually very monotonous, the words, if not impromptu, are a sort of history, or ballad in praise of some warrior, or ‘burra-sahib.’ Some have a kind of chorus, each in turn singing an improvised verse.”
This type appears to be the origin of a nation’s folk-song.
It is a sign of a country’s civilization when it begins to keep records, either by tradition or more fixed methods, and it is a theory (which may be probably accepted as correct) that chronicles were first chanted in ballad form and thus more easily passed downward in remembrance. This may be accepted as the origin of the folk-ballad. Its music has originated by the same natural instinct that produces language.
Much has been said of the communal origin of folk-song and folk-music, but it is somewhat difficult fully to realise what is meant by such a term in relation to these matters.
Those who hold this theory appear to assert that a folk-song with its music has had a primal formation at some early and indefinite time, and that this germ, thrown upon the world, has been fashioned and changed by numberless brains according to the popular demand, and has only met with general acceptance when it has fulfilled the requirements that the populace have demanded. This change is called its “evolution,” and it is sometimes claimed that this evolution still goes on where folk-songs are yet sung; this means that the folk-song is virtually in a state of fluidity.
Such, briefly, appears to be the idea of those who hold the evolutionary, or communal, theory of folk-song origin. It cannot be denied that there is an obvious truth in such a contention, but before it can be generally accepted surely there must be much modification. It cannot be altogether decided that the original germ is absolutely different from the folk-song as found existing to-day, but that both folk-song and folk-music are subject to change also cannot be disputed. The parlour game “Gossip,” in which A whispers a short narrative to B, who in turn whispers it to C, the narrative passing finally to Z, has been used as an illustration of the variations that folk-song undergoes. In the game, the tale originally put forth by A is generally found to be much unlike that received by Z. Folk-song in some degree suffers such change by conscious or unconscious alteration. Unconscious alteration we can easily understand; that is merely the result of imperfect remembrance. Conscious alteration may be the effect, in vocal rendering, of a difficulty in individual singers of attaining certain intervals, or from choice. Alteration in instrumental rendering of folk-music is chiefly due to lack of skill in the performer on a particular instrument. Thus, what may be difficult to render on a flute may be easy on a fiddle; hence we can conceive an alteration may be purposely made for facility of performance. This is decidedly not evolution, nor communal origin.
III. THE CANTE-FABLE
The existence of the “Cante-fable” has furnished another theory of folk-song origin. The Cante-fable is a traditional prose narrative having rhymed passages incorporated with the tale. These rhymes are generally short verses, or couplets, which recur at dramatic points of the story. They were probably sung to tunes, but present-day remembrance has failed to preserve more than a few specimens, and the verse, or couplet, is now generally recited.