Most expressive of popular feeling toward woman is, perhaps, the ballad and folklore poetry of a people. Though preserved mostly without date or name they breathe national sentiment most faithfully. True folk songs would betray the nationality from which they sprang even though the language did not. All the characteristics of the German Gemut (mood, soul, sentiment, and longing strangely blended) exhale from songs like the following:
"Sweet nightingale, thyself prepare,
The morning breaks, and thou must be
My faithful messenger to her,
My best beloved, who waits for thee.
"She in her garden for thee stays,
And many an anxious thought will spring,
And many a sigh her breast will raise,
Till thou good tidings from me bring.
"So speed thee up, nor longer stay;