Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1913-11-28
ANCIENT FRENCH SONGS.
Songs from the First Crusade
Through the French Revolution.

The understanding that men now
resting fer centuries beneath the good
French soil once worshipped their
God, adored their sWeethearts, fought
about dusty myths like the divine
right of kings, believed many things
which we sneer at and knew not few
things which we have forgotten. The
idea of skull and a collection of
bones having once made love to the
skull and bones in the neighboring
cemetery, 1t is a platitude, but like
most platitudes ii needs only a song
to become a miracle.
History tells us mostly about big
glittering things-kings and treaties
and battles. with maybe massacre
now and then for variety. But these
were fer the most part only the indi-
Gators of history. not history itself.
They We're like the hands of the clock,
which represent the clock to observ-
ers. but are quite lifeless and helpless
and move only according to the works
within. History. in the heart of it, is
people. 1t is the people who make
the values which kings and wars and
treaties only put through the clearing
house. And for the most part people
are unconscious of the histry they are
making. Like most important per-
sons, they are important by minding
their own business. No doubt the
Battle of Blenheim or the Feast of st.
Bartholomew sifted only slowly and
vaguely to the people of Marseilles OF
Lyons. The people in their personal
h..Iiafe inVa1tiaS Y,afla HInt, holm
and St. Bartholomew possible or ne
eessary, but were largely unconscious
Of the results. 1t is these beliefs and
loyalties that men most sing about.
And SO it comes that popular arr
shows the very heart of history.
The song of the Flagellants was a
gentle and adoring hymn to the Virgin,
little different in spirit than one of
Raphael's alterations in color. And
when we learn through our very ears
that the men who wandered from
town to town, scourging themselves in
public places to remind men of the
of the high God, partook of the gentle
and sensuous poetry with which
medieval times endowed Our Lady,
We suddenly see them as human and
see how they could be one of the
forces operating not on parchment
but from man to man, which made the
history of the time.
Sometimes the songs were unbe-
lievably beautiful, like the Invocation
a lAmour," which was as gem-like in
form as anything of Gluck or Rameau.
Again they were just vulgar market
place tunes, like "FHomme Arme,"
Which, however. went into any number
Of sacred masses, so completely can
religion sanctify the things of this
world to it's uses. Usually they were
musical beauty in essence the selec-
ton, by one process or another, of the
best of many thousands of songs. No
musician dare sneer at them, for they
are ancestors While he is but a pam
pered descendant. They were rich
with the variety of many symphonies;
there were Christmas songs, and re-
hSiouS ballads, and love songs happy
and despairing, patriotic songs from
the Crusades through Jeanne dare
down, and national anthems, revolu-
uonary, moderate and reactionary-
altogether a most dazzling array of
human emotions and loyalties, which
may in some measure become ours,
while the men who sang them are
scattered, skull and bones, from the
nils of Jerusalem to the stones of
Pere-la Chaise.-Boston Transcript.