It would be difficult, even if it were wise, to isolate the music of the craft cycles from that which preceded it in liturgical drama. In some ways the sources and antecedents of craft cycle music are more important than the subject itself. Let us, then, begin with the place of music in liturgical drama. Every student of the liturgy is aware of its large musical content; in fact, almost all of the liturgy which is intended to be heard by the congregation is sung. This music is called plainchant or plainsong. One obvious reason why most of the liturgy has always been sung is to be found in the very ancient and genuine reliance upon a union of words and music to express in sound the highest and most profound emotions. To the Protestant and modern ear this union will often seem no more than an eccentric way of speaking the words. Yet even Protestants sing hymns and psalms; they do not say them. And it was not so very long ago that a great deal of English lyric poetry was regarded as inseparable from the melodies which accompanied it. One also recalls Greek drama and its superb unification of the three arts of poetry, music, and the dance. No one is surprised, therefore, to find that when drama came out of the liturgy the melodies came along with the words. Indeed, here was somewhat the same inter-dependence and union that had been in Greek drama. Liturgical drama was truly musical drama.