Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886) Part 15

--If thou wilt be the prior, and I To thee my sins must say, Then will I sleep among the dead, While the sisters weep and pray.

--If thou wilt sleep among the dead, While the sisters weep and pray, Then I will be the holy earth That on thee they shall lay.

--If thou wilt be the holy earth That on me they shall lay-- Well--since some gallant I must have, I will not say thee nay.

A distinguished French scholar thought that he heard in this an echo of Anacreon's ode [Greek: k' eus koren]. The inference suggested is too hazardous for acceptance; yet that in some sort the song may date from Greek Provence would seem to be the opinion even of cautious critics. Thus we are led to look back to those a.s.sociations which, without giving a personal or political splendour such as that attached to Magna Graecia, lend nevertheless to Provencal memories the exquisite charm, the "_bouquet_" (if the word does not sound absurd) of all things Greek. The legend of Greek beginnings in Provence will bear being once more told. Four hundred and ninety years before Christ a little fleet of Greek fortune-seekers left Phocaea, in Asia Minor, and put into a small creek on the Provencal coast, the port of the future Ma.r.s.eilles. As soon as they had disembarked, deeming it to be of importance to them to stand well with the people of the land, they sent to the king of the tribes inhabiting those sh.o.r.es an amba.s.sador bearing gifts and overtures of friendly intercourse. When the amba.s.sador reached Arles, Nann, the king, was giving a great feast to his warriors, from among whom his daughter Gyptis was that day to choose a husband. The young Greek entered the banqueting-hall and sat down at the king's board. When the feasting was over, fair-haired Gyptis, the royal maiden, rose from her seat and went straightway to the strange guest; then, lifting in her hands the cup of espousal, she offered it to his lips. He drank, and Provence became the bride of Greece.

The children of that marriage left behind them a graveyard to tell their history. Desecrated and despoiled though it is, still the great Arlesian cemetery bears unique witness as well to the civilised prosperity of the Provencal Greeks as to their decline under the influences which formed the modern Provence. Irreverence towards the dead--a comparatively new human characteristic--can nowhere be more fully observed than in the _Elysii Campi_ of Arles. The love of destruction has been doing its worst there for some centuries. To any king coming to the town the townsfolk would make a gift of a priceless treasure stolen from their dead ancestors, while the peasant who wanted a cattle trough, or the mason in need of a door lintel, went unrebuked and carried off what thing suited him. Not even the halo of Christian romance could save the Alyscamps. The legend is well known.

St Trefume, man or myth, summoned the bishops of Gaul and Provence to the consecration of this burial-ground. When they were a.s.sembled and the rite was to be performed, each one shrank from taking on himself so high an office; then Christ appeared in their midst and made the sign of the cross over the sleeping-place of the pagan dead. Out of the countless stories of the meeting of the new faith and the old--stories too often of a nascent or an expiring fanaticism, there is not one which breathes a gentler spirit. It was long believed, that the devil had little power with the dead that lay in Arles. Hence the mult.i.tude of sepulchres which Dante saw _ove 'l Rodano stagna_.

Princes and archbishops and an innumerable host of minor folks left instructions that they might be buried in the Alyscamps. A simple mode of transport was adopted by the population of the higher Rhone valley.

The body, bound to a raft or bier, was committed to the current of the river, with a sum of money called the "drue de mourtalage" attached to it. These silent travellers always reached their destination in safety, persons appointed to the task being in readiness to receive them. The sea water washed the limits of the cemetery in the days of the Greeks, who looked across the dark, calm surface of the immense lagune and thought of dying as of embarkation upon a voyage--not the last voyage of the body down the river of life, but the first voyage of the soul over the sea of death--and they wished their dead [Greek: euploi].

The Greek traces that exist in the living people of Provence are few, but distinct. There is, in the first place, the type of beauty particularly a.s.sociated with the women of Arles. As a rule, the Provencal woman is not beautiful; nor is she very willing to admit that her Arlesian sisters are one whit more beautiful than she. The secret of their fame is interpreted by her in the stereotyped remark, "C'est la coiffe!" But the coif of Arles, picturesque though it is in its stern simplicity, could not change an ugly face into a pretty one, and the wearers of it are well ent.i.tled to the honour they claim as their birthright. Scarcely due attention has been paid to the good looks of the older and even of the aged women; I have not seen their equals save among a face of quite another type, the Teutonic amazons of the Val Mastalone. In countries where the sun is fire, if youth does not always mean beauty, beauty means almost always youth. M.

Lentheric thinks that he detects a second clear trace of the Greeks in the horn wrestling practised all over the dried-up lagune which the fork of the Rhone below Arles forms into an island. Astride of their wild white steeds, the hors.e.m.e.n drive one of the superb black bulls of the Camargue towards a group of young men on foot, who, catching him by his horns, wrestle with him till he is forced to bend the knee and bite the dust. The amus.e.m.e.nt is dangerous, but it is not brutal. The horses escape unhurt, so does the bull; the risk is for the men alone, and it is a risk voluntarily and eagerly run. So popular is the sport that it is difficult to prevent children from joining in it. In Thessaly it was called [Greek: keratisis], and the bull in the act of submission is represented on a large number of Ma.s.saliote and other coins.

Ma.r.s.eilles, which has lost the art and the type of Greece, has kept the Greek temperament. It is no more French than Naples is Italian: both are Greek towns, though the characteristics that prove them such have been somewhat differentiated by unlike external conditions. Still they have points in common which are many and strong. Marsalia can match in _emeutes_ the proverbial _quattordici rebellioni_ of "loyal"

Parthenope; and quickness of intelligence, love of display, mobility of feeling, together with an astounding vitality, belong as much to Ma.r.s.eillais as to Neapolitan. The people of Ma.r.s.eilles, the most thriftless in France, have thriven three thousand years, and are thriving now, in spite of the readiness of each small middle-cla.s.s family to lay out a half-year's savings on a breakfast at Roubion's; in spite of the alacrity with which each working man sacrifices a week's wages in order to "demonstrate" in favour of, or still better against, no matter whom or what. Nowhere is there a more overweening local pride. "Paris," say the Ma.r.s.eillais, "would be a fine town if it had our _Cannebiere_." Nowhere, as has been made lamentably plain, are the hatreds of race and caste and politics more fierce or more ruthless. Even with her own citizens Ma.r.s.eilles is stern; only after protest does she grant a monument to Adolphe Thiers--himself just a Greek Ma.s.saliote thrown into the French political arena. There is reason to think that Greek was a spoken tongue at Ma.r.s.eilles at least as late as the sixth century A.D. The Sanjanen, the fisherman of St John's Quarter, has still a whole vocabulary of purely Greek terms incidental to his calling. The Greek character of the speech of the Ma.r.s.eillais sailors was noticed by the Abbe Papon, who attributed to the same source the peculiar prosody and intonation of the street cries of Ma.r.s.eilles. The Provencal historian remarks, with an acuteness rare in the age in which he wrote (the early part of the last century), "I draw my examples from the people, because it is with them that we must seek the precious remains of ancient manners and usages. Amongst the great, amongst people of the world, one sees only the imprint of fashion, and fashion never stands still."

The Sanjanens are credited with the authorship of this cynical little song:

Fisher, fishing in the sea, Fish my mistress up for me.

Fish her up before she drowns, Thou shalt have four hundred crowns.

Fish her for me dead and cold, Thou shalt have my all in gold.

The romantic ballads of Provence are of an importance which demands, properly speaking, a separate study. Provence was, beyond a doubt, one of the main sources of the ballad literature of France, Spain, and Italy. That certain still existing Provencal ballads pa.s.sed over into Piedmont as early as the thirteenth century is the opinion of Count Nigra, the Italian diplomatist, not the least of whose distinguished services to his country has been the support he was one of the first to give to the cause of popular research. In all these songs the plot goes for everything, the poetry for little or nothing; I shall therefore best economise my s.p.a.ce by giving a rough outline of the stories of two or three of them. "Fluranco" is a characteristic specimen. Fluranco, "la flour d'aquest pays," was married when she was a little thing, and her husband at once went away to the wars. Monday they were wed, Tuesday he was gone. At the end of seven years the knight comes back, knocks at the door, and asks for Fluranco. His mother says that she is no longer here; they sent her to fetch water, and the Moors, the Saracen Moors, carried her off. "Where did they take her to?" "They took her a hundred leagues away." The knight makes a ship of gold and silver; he sails and sails without seeing aught but the washer-women washing fine linen. At last he asks of them: "Tell me whose tower is that, and to whom that castle belongs." "It is the castle of the Saracen Moor." "How can I get into it?" "Dress yourself as a poor pilgrim, and ask alms in Christ's name." In this way he gains admittance, and Fluranco (she it is) bids the servant set the table for the "poor pilgrim." When the knight is seated at table, Fluranco begins to laugh. "What are you laughing at, Madamo?" She confesses that she knows who he is. They collect a quant.i.ty of fine gold; then they go the stable, and she mounts the russet horse and he mounts the grey. Just as they are crossing the bridge the Moor sees them. "Seven years," he cries, "I have clothed thee in fine damask, seven years I have given thee morocco shoes, seven years I have laid thee in fine linen, seven years I have kept thee--for one of my sons!"

The carelessness or cruelty of a stepmother (the head-wife of Asiatic tales) is a prolific central idea in Provencal romance. While the husband was engaged in distant adventures--tournaments, feudal wars, or crusading expeditions--the wife, who was often little more than a child, remained at the mercy of the occasionally unamiable dowager who ruled the masterless _chateau_. The case of cruelty is exemplified in the story of Guilhem de Beauvoire, who has to leave his child-wife five weeks after marriage. "I counsel you, mother," he says as he sets out, "to put her to do no kind of work: neither to fetch water, nor to spin, nor yet to knead bread. Send her to ma.s.s, and give her good dinners, and let her go out walking with other ladies." At the end of five weeks the mother put the young wife to keep swine. The swine girl went up to the mountain top and sang and sang. Guilhem de Beauvoire, who was beyond the sea, said to his page, "Does it not seem as though my wife were singing?" He travels at all speed over mountain and sea till he comes to his home, where no man knows him. On the way he meets the swine girl, and from her he hears that she has to eat only that which is rejected of the swine. At the house he is welcomed as an honoured guest; supper is laid for him, and he asks that the swine girl whom he has seen may come and sup with him. When she sits down beside him the swine girl bursts into tears. "Why do you weep, swine girl?" "For seven years I have not supped at table!" Then in the bitterness of yet another outrage to which the vile woman subjects her, she cries aloud, "Oh! Guilhem de Beauvoire, who art beyond the sea, G.o.d help thee! Verily thy cruel mother has abandoned me!"

Secretly Guilhem tells her who he is, and in proof of it shows her the ring she gave him. In the morning the mother calls the swine girl to go after her pigs. "If you were not my mother," says Guilhem, "I would have you hung; as you are my mother, I will wall you up between two walls."

The antiquity of the ballads of _Fluranco_ and _Guilhem de Beauvoire_ is shown by the fact that they plainly belong to a time when such work as fetching water or making bread was regarded as amongst the likely employments of n.o.ble ladies--though, from excess of indulgence, Guilhem did not wish his wife to be set even to these light tasks. A ballad, probably of about the same date, treats the case of a man who, through the weakness which is the cause of half the crimes, becomes the agent of his mother's guilt. The tragedy is unfolded with almost the sublime laconicism of the _Divina Commedia_. Francoiso was married when she was so young that she did not know how to do the service, and the cruel mother was always saying to her son that Francoiso must die.

One day, after the young wife had laid the table, and had set thereon the wine and the bread, and the fresh water, her husband said to her, "My Francoiso, is there not anyone, no friend, who shall protect thy life?" "I have my mother and my father, and you, who are my husband, very well will you protect my life." Then, as they sit at meat, he takes a knife and kills her; and he lifts her in his arms and kisses her, and lays her under the flower of the jessamine, and he goes to his mother and says, "My mother, your greatest wish is fulfilled: I have killed Francoiso."

The genuine Provencal does not shrink from violence. Old inhabitants still tell tales of the savage brigandage of the Esterel, of the horrors of the _Terreur blanche_. Mild manners and social amenities have never been characteristic of fair Provence. Even now the peasant cannot disentangle his thoughts without a volley of oaths--harmless indeed, for the most part (except those which are borrowed from the _franciots_), but in sound terrific. Yet if it be true that the character of a nation is a.s.serted in its songs, it must be owned that the songs of Provence speak favourably for the Provencal people. They say that they are a people who have a steady and abiding sympathy with honest men and virtuous women. They say further that rough and ruthless though they may be when their blood is stirred, yet have they a pitiful heart. The Provencal singer is slow to utterly condemn; he grasps the saving inconsistencies of human nature; he makes the murderer lay his victim "souto lou flour dou jaussemin:" under the white jessamine flower, cherished beyond all flowers in Provence, which has a strange pa.s.sion for white things--white horses, white dogs, white sheep, white doves, and the fair white hand of woman. Many songs deal directly with almsgivings, the ritual of pity. To no part of the Bible is there more frequent reference than to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus; no neocatholic legend has been more gladly accepted than the story in which some tattered beggar proves to be Christ--a story, by the by, that holds in it the essence of the Christian faith. If a Greek saw a beautiful unknown youth playing his pipe beside some babbling stream, he believed him to be a G.o.d; the Christian of the early ages recognised Christ in each mendicant in loathsome rags, in each leper succoured at the risk of mortal infection.

The Provencal tongue is not a mixture (as is too often said) of Italian and French; nor is physical Provence a less fair Italy or a fairer France. A land wildly convulsed in its storms, mysteriously breathless in its calms; a garden here, a desert there; a land of translucent inlets and red porphyry hills; before all, a land of the illimitable grey of olive and limestone--this is Provence. Anyone finding himself of a sudden where the Provencal olives raise their dwarf heads with a weary look of eternity to the rainless heaven, would say that the dominant feature in the landscape was its exceeding seriousness. Sometimes on the coast the prevailing note changes from grey to blue; the blanched rocks catch the colour of the sea, and not the sky only, but dry fine air close around seems of a blueness so intense as to make the senses swim. Better suited to a Nature thus made up of crude discords and subtle harmonies is the old Provencal speech, howsoever corrupt, than the exquisite French of Parisian _salons_. But the language goes and the songs go too. Damase Arbaud relates how, when he went on a long journey to speak with a man reported to have cognisance of much traditional matter, he met, issuing from the house door, not the man, but his coffin. The fact is typical; the old order of things pa.s.ses away: _nouastei diou se'n van_.

[Footnote 1: I am told that the peasants of the country round Moscow have a natural gift for imitating birds, and that they intersperse the singing of their own sad songs with this sweet carolling.]

THE WHITE PATERNOSTER.

In a paper published under the head of "Chaucer's Night Spell" in the Folk-lore Record (part i. p. 145), Mr Thoms drew attention to four lines spoken by the carpenter in Chaucer's _Miller's Tale_:

Lord Jhesu Crist, and seynte Benedyht Blesse this hous from every wikked wight, Fro nyghtes verray, the White Paternostre When wonestow now, seynte Petres soster.

("Verray" is commonly supposed to mean night-mare, but Mr Thoms referred it to "Werra," a Sclavonic deity.)

Mention of the White Paternoster occurs again in White's _Way to the True Church_ (1624):

White Paternoster, Saint Peter's brother, What hast i' th t'one hand? white booke leaves, What hast i' th t'other hand? heaven gate keyes.

Open heaven gates, and streike (shut) h.e.l.l gates: And let every crysome child creepe to its own mother.

White Paternoster, Amen.

A reading of the formula is preserved in the _Enchiridion Papae Leonis_, a book translated into French soon after its first appearance in Latin at Rome in 1502:

Au soir, m'allant coucher, je trouvis trois anges a mon lit couches, un aux pieds, deux au chevet, la bonne Vierge Marie du milieu, qui me dit que je me couchis, que rien ne doutis.

Le bon Dieu est mon Pere, la bonne Vierge est ma mere, les trois vierges sont mes s[oe]urs. La chemise ou Dieu fut ne, mon corps en est enveloppe; la croix Sainte Marguerite a ma poitrine est ecrite; madame d'en va sur les champs a Dieu pleurant, rencontrit Monsieur Saint Jean. Monsieur Saint Jean, d'ou venez vous? Je viens d' _Ave Salus_. Vous n'avez pas vu le bon Dieu; si est, il est dans l'arbre de la croix, les pieds pendans, les mains clouans, un pet.i.t chapeau d'epine blanche sur la tete.

Qui la dira trois fois au soir, trois fois au matin, gagnera le Paradis a la fin.

Curious as are the above citations, they only go a little way towards filling up the blanks in the history of this waif from the fabric of early Christian popular lore. A search of some years has yielded evidence that the White Paternoster is still a part of the living traditional matter of at least five European countries. Most persons are familiar with the English version which runs thus:

Four corners to my bed, Four angels round my head, One to watch, one to pray, And two to bear my soul away.

A second English variant was set on record by Aubrey, and may also be read in Ady's "Candle in the Dark" (1655):

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Bless the bed that I lye on; And blessed guardian angel keep Me safe from danger while I sleep.

Halliwell suggests that the two last lines were imitated from the following in Bishop Ken's Evening Hymn:

Let my blest guardian, while I sleep, His watchful station near me keep.

But if there was any imitation in the case, it was the bishop who copied from the folk-rhymer, not the folk-rhymer from the bishop.

The thought of the coming of death in sleep, is expressed in a prayer that may be sometimes seen inscribed at the head and foot of the bed in Norwegian homesteads:

HEAD.

Here is my bed and sleeping place; G.o.d, let me sleep in peace And blithe open my eyes And go to work.

FOOT.

Go into thy bed, take thee a slumber, Reflect now on the last hour; Reflect now, That thou mayest take thy last slumber.

a.n.a.logous in spirit is a quatrain that has been known to me since childhood, but which I do not remember to have seen in print:

I lay me down to rest me, And pray the Lord to bless me.

If I should sleep no more to wake I pray the Lord my soul to take.

The _Pet.i.te Patenotre Blanche_ lingers in France in a variety of shapes. One version was written down as late as 1872 from the mouth of an old woman named Catherine Bastien, an inhabitant of the department of the Loire. It was afterwards communicated to _Melusine_.

Jesu m'endort, Si je trepa.s.se, mande mon corps, Si je trepa.s.se, mande mon ame, Si je vis, mande mon esprit.

(Je) prends les anges pour mes amis, Le bon Dieu pour mon pere, La Sainte Vierge pour ma mere, Saint Louis de Gonzague, Aux quatre coins de ma chambre, Aux quatre coins be mon lit; Preservez moi de l'ennemi, Seigneur, a l'heure de ma mort.

Quenot, in his _Statistique de la Charante_ (1818), gives the subjoined:

Dieu l'a faite, je la dit; J'ai trouve quatre anges couches dans mon lit; Deux a la tete, deux aux pieds, Et le bon Dieu aux milieu.

De quoi puis-je avoir peur?