Killed his sweetheart, Hannah Brooke."

This quality is in marked contrast to the more romantic and poetic element to be found in the songs of many European nations. This energetic and straightforward quality in old English melodies does not prevent them from being beautiful; they are true to human nature and unspoiled by sophistry.

VI. AN IRISH FOLK-SONG.

Our next illustration is an Irish song called "The Flight of the Earls," one of the most beautiful of melodies. (See Figure VII.)

In this illustration the curved lines represent the phrases and correspond to the lines of the poem, while the brackets show the larger formal structure of the melody, A being the statement, or clause of assertion, B the clause of contrast, and A the restatement. A mere glance at this music will show how certain phrases are used throughout to hold the melody together. The first and second measures,[6] for example, contain a phrase of which one part or the other will be found in almost every measure of the song. The first half of the song ends at 9 with a modulation to the fifth above, or dominant, while the "restatement after contrast" (beginning on the last note of measure 13) is quite clear.

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FIGURE VII.

Certain details may be pointed out for the benefit of the student. The first phrase, ending on the note D (5), gives a sense of being poised for a moment before proceeding to the next note, D not being a point of rest such as is supplied by the C with which the second phrase ends—at 9. The same device is used at the end of the third phrase (13). The clause of contrast (9-13), while based on the rhythm of the motive of three notes at the beginning of the song, is distinguished from either of the other two parts by the absence of the characteristic sixteenth-note figure of measure two.

This song justifies all that we have said about the poetic beauty of folk-songs. Within its short compass are contained elements of perfection that may well astonish those who look on folk-songs as immaterial to the development of the art of music. For this melody is as complete and perfect an expression of that natural idealism that seems to have animated human beings from the earliest times as is the present day music of our own ideals.