called " serenades," are the most usual forms of
popular songs.

Again, in the old provinces of French Flanders
there are many of the ditties whose existernce
they wish to preserve; and curiously
enough one of the popular songs of this district
is the same as a Lithuanian ballad familiar to
the people on the borders of Russia.

Another is called

           LE MESSAGER  D'AMOUR.

    Un petit oiseau, blanc comme neige, se balançait
sur une branche d'epine.
    "Veux-tu être mon messager?— Je suis trop
petit, je ne suis qu'un petit oiseau.
   —Si tu es petit, tu es subtil; tu sais le chemin.
   —Oui, je le connais bien."
   II prit le billet dans son bec, et l'emporta en
s'envolant.
    II s'envola jusqu'à la demeure de m'amie.
    " Dors-tu? veilles-tu? es-tu trépassée?
   —Je ne dors, ni ne veille; je suis mariée depuis
une demi-année.
   —Tu es mariée depuis une demi-année; il me
semblait que c'était depuis mille ans!"

    [ A little bird as white as snow hung poised upon
a thorn-tree branch.
    " Wilt thou be my messenger?"
    " I am so little. I am only a little bird."
    " If thou art little, thou art clever; thou knowest
the way?"
    " Yes, I know it well."
    He took the letter in his beak, and flew away
with it.
    He flew to the house of my sweetheart.
    " Sleepest thou? watchest thou? or art thou
dead?"
    " I neither sleep nor watch. I have been married
for half a year."
    "Thou hast been married for half a year! It
seemed to me like a thousand years ago!"]

Curiously enough, from the eastern provinces
of France, those of which she has so often
disputed the possession with Germany, no traces
of popular songs have been discovered which
either in language or subject match those of
French origin; a proof to us, who have the calm
judgment, of foreigners, that the sympathies of
the people are with Germany. Alsace and
Burgundy are the silent provinces; all the others
speak of former times, though often with broken
and uncertain voice. At one time the popular
language in France was a dialect of Latin, wide-
spread by the multitude of university scholars
and the number of ecclesiastics of every grade.

As an instance of the wide-spread knowledge
of a kind of bastard-Latin in the seventh century,
the commissioners quote the fragment that
remains of the song composed to celebrate the
victory of Clothaire over the Saxons in 622,
which begins as follows:

        De Chlotario est canere Rege Francorum,
        Qui ivit pregnare in gentem Saxonum.

This song passed from mouth to mouth, and
was recited by uneducated people, by women
in the true old ballad (ballet) style, being
accompanied by dances, gestures, and clappings
of the hand.

Next to these songs, of which all the words,
however ungrammatically terminated and
arranged, have a purely Latin origin, the
commissioners would place those which are partly
French and partly Latin, such as the chant
which was composed by the scholars of Abelard,
when that great master announced his
determination to quit the Paraclete. This song is
composed of three (rhymed) Latin lines, and
then comes the refrain, or burden in old French,

               Tort a vers nos li mestres.

But these rhymed Latin verses endured for
many generations. Long after the uneducated
people had ceased to understand their meaning,
they formed a burden to popular songs, like our
own " Tra, la, la, la, la, la," or " Down, down,
derry down," and such meaningless repetitions
to madrigals and songs, particularly to those
prevalent in England from the reign of Elizabeth
to Queen Anne. In France, these Latin refrains
may be traced down to the beginning of the
eighteenth century.

Of course, if such fragments as are preserved
in Latin are to be admitted, the mediaeval
French relics must be collected with care. The
worst of it is that too many of these originate
with the Troubadours, and are the work of
educated men, who mix up feeling with simple
narration, often almost to the exclusion of the
latter. Their poems are also subject to the
rules of art, which, although it makes them be
more admired by those who understand the
limits, and the reason for such limits, within
which they have been composed, takes them out
of the range of popular sympathy.

Here the commission felt themselves in a
dilemma what to admit. But they decided that
whatsoever poems were sung or recited among
the common people, or even whatever
manuscript poems existed, having a distinctly
popular origin, should come within the class which
they desired to collect. Moreover, they wished
to collect all narrative ballads, all  " complaints,"
all the political songs of a past age which had
endured to the present, in whatever form of
language they had been preserved, whether in
the vulgar tongue or in rhyme; all popular
sermons, lives of male or female saints;
"moralities," and similar dramatic teachings; sayings
about different professions or trades; lays or
fables, and the dramatic conversations, which
hardly amounted to the dignity of plays, such
as Aucassin and Nicolette, Robin and Marion,
&c. For in all these kinds of compositions
fragments of popular songs, or references to
them, may be found, even in sermons. The
readers of Latimer's sermons will see the
wisdom of the latter part of this injunction.

Moreover, if there is a traditional air to which
songs are sung, it is to be noted down with an
especial reference to discovering if the ancient
laws of thorough-bass are the same as those
which prevail at present.

There are numerous legends relating to the
Virgin, who, in her maternal character, is
supposed to have supreme power in heaven. There
is a canticle in the dialect of Périgord that shows
how the attribute of mercy seems appropriated