Nursery Friends From France

These little chansons, which take the place of nursery rhymes in France, have been beloved by generations of French children, for most of them are at least a hundred years old. They come to America, bearing the lively, varied rhythms, now gay and bounding in merriment, now sweet and tender, which can well up from no single writer, but only from the hearts of a while people. There is more of the real France in these rhymes than in volumes of more learned books. And what a kaleidoscope of French life – shepards and shepardesses, now from the dainty fancy of a Watteau, now from a rugges reality of a Jules Breton, peasants and princes, citizens and villagers, ploughmen and sailors, lawyers and millers, carpenters and blacksmiths, duchesses and beggars! Now one wanders in shops and city squares, where dames of Pairs sweep all day; in a moment, presto! there is the countryside – flowery meadows, green fields, and forests, chateaux, thatched cottages and Gothic church spires. This is France and this is the French chanson.