The recent volume of the Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco on Folk-Songs is quickly and ably followed up. Folk-songs are one of the principal developments of the folk-lore of a country, and of all countries those of Italy are the most important. Whatever they may be thought to have borrowed from Greece or the East, they there received a perfection of diction, and became the own utterance of the people in a way which is unrivalled in any other country. Spain alone can dispute the palm; but the Spanish songs which we know and admire most tell of nobles and heroes, and are not of the people themselves in the way the Italian songs are.
Miss Busk has devoted many years to working up this collection of them, and she has had the immense advantage of the co-operation of native friends to direct and control her researches. Dr. Pitrè, the greatest of Italian folk-lorists, himself selecting for her the Sicilian contingent. We have every reason to conceive therefore that she has succeeded in her aim of making it perfectly representative of the thoughts and manners of the Italian peoples in all the various provinces of the peninsula; and care and scholarly handling are apparent alike in the selection of information in the Prefatory Treatise and numerous Notes, and in the delicate finish of every part. The structure and the history of the varying forms of the folk-song, all the different parts of the country, are succinctly traced, and the dialectic changes explained, and the relation of local customs and traditions judiciously pointed out; and amid all this immense range of variation, as well as in that of date, the characteristics which distinguish the most polished folk-song from literary poetry are never for a moment wanting.
We have alluded to the range of date, but we ought more particularly to state that this is very considerable. Miss Busk has been fortunate in being able to introduce some very remarkable specimens of very early date. Nothing can be more quaintly pretty than the religious ballate at p. 29, while that at p. 126 is one of the most prodigiously stirring utterances of the much-worn theme of a forsaken maiden that has ever been written, and this is over four centuries old.
