Former collectors of Russian folk-songs have already laid stress on the fact that the old songs are gradually losing their character, and indeed passing into oblivion. Recent observers have frequently dwelt on the general impoverishment, and indeed on the actual decline, of the ancient poetical creative faculty, of which the products have been ousted by poetry of the modern school.
The old poetry might have been expected to survive, if anywhere, in the northern districts of Russia, thanks to their special historical and cultural conditions, yet even there the ancient folk-songs which formed the delight of our ancestors are suffering decay and threaten to disappear. This is what an observer, Mr. Istomin, wrote in the preface to Songs of the Russian People collected in the Governments of Olonetz and Archangel in 1886:—"Judging partly by the materials we have collected, and more particularly by my personal impressions from the intercourse with the inhabitants of the countries which we have visited, we cannot but arrive at the depressing conclusion that in modern times, in nearly all the districts visited by us, popular songs are being forgotten. The modern youth among the peasantry, even in those remote districts, begin to look coldly on the old folk-songs, and this is particularly true of the younger generation." Similar evidence is given by a traveller,
