Note 648 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY (continued 2)

Well meant but ludicrous compilations, designed to offer songs of solace and cheer to all sorts of labourers, and to drive out the idle rimes which they are wont to sing, are cleverly noted in Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s Unsere Volksthümlichen Lieder, Leipzig, 3d ed., 1869; the specimens he gives in his introduction are highly amusing, and are taken from Becker’s Mildheimisches Lieder-Buch, 1799, which provides special songs for the butcher, the chimney-sweep, the scissors-grinder, and all the rest. See Hoffmann, pp. vii ff.