There are also certain local festivals held
principally in the towns which formerly
belonged to French Flanders, each of which is
supposed to have belonged long ago to
aboriginal giants such as the Jan and Jannikin
of Brussels, who make an annual promenade
through that city; and probably no distant
relations to Gog and Magog. There are local
songs in honour of these municipal giants,
embodying their legendary history; and these
also the commission desire to collect.

They have not yet received any account of
existing remains of the old Roman paganism,
but of the religion of the Druids there are
many traces in the popular literature,
particularly in Brittany. The Druidical doctrine of
the metempsychosis, or successive existence in
different forms, is to be traced in the following
Breton fragment:

              La Sainte Marguerite
              Qui veut ouïr la chanson
              (De Sainte Marguerite)
              (Toujours) la mère chante
              Ã€ la fille qui crie,
              Un beau jour la demande,
              Qu'avez-vous Marguerite?
              J'ai bien des maladies
              Et n'ose vous le dire;
              Tout le jour je suis fille,
              Et la nuit blanche biche;
              Toutes les chasseries
              Sont après moi la nuit.
              Cell' de mon frère Biron
              Elle est encore la pire.
              Appel' tes chiens, Biron?
              C'est ta sÅ“ur Marguerite,
              II a corné trois fois
              All' son cornet de cuivre,
              La quatrième fois
              La blanche biche est priso
              En out fait un dîner
              Aux barons de la ville,
              Nous voici tous illé [ici],
              Hors ta sÅ“ur Marguerite,
              Elle répond du plat,
              Suis la première assise;
              Mon foie et mon poumon
              Sont dans la grande marmite,
              Mon sang est répandu
              Par toute la cuisine,
              Aussi mes blonds cheveux
              Pendent à la cheville,
              Ha! je les vois d'ici
              Que le vent les guenille.

THE HOLY MARGARET.

[Who will listen to the song about Holy Margaret?
The mother sings always to the daughter who
weeps. One fine day she asked her, " What ails
thee, Margaret?" "Alas, my ills are manifold; I
scarce dare tell them you. By day I am a maiden;
but by night I am a white doe. The huntsmen
chase me all night long; my brother Biron is
the keenest huntsman of them all. Call off thy
hounds, Biron! It is thy sister Margaret."  Thrice
blew he his horn, his horn of shining brass; the
fourth time that he blew it the white doe was
taken. A grand dinner was made for the barons of
the city."   "Here be we all!"   "All save Margaret,
thy sister!"  she spoke from the platter. " I
am the first placed at table. My liver and my
lungs are in the large caldron; my blood streams
over the kitchen-floor. My golden hair hangs on
the nail, I see it from here. The wind shakes it
to tatters."]

Every one knows the custom of the Beltane
fires,* still preserved in some parts of the Highlands,
when the fires are lighted to Baal on the
hill-tops at the time of the summer solstice, but
in those parts of France which border on Germany
a similar description of festival, accompanied
with fragments of popular song bearing
reference to it, is kept on St. Martin's-day, i.e.,
at the commencement of the winter solstice.
This custom may be traced up to Scandinavian
ancestry.  Another tradition from the same
source is embodied in Breton ballads, where
three swans are changed into three maidens, a
girl is changed into a swan, &c., reminding us
of the three Valkyrias in the Edda, who leave
their swan's plumage on the sea-shore when
they go to bathe. Almost all English children
know the interminable legend of the old woman
driving her obstinate pig, and her calls upon all
things animate and inanimate to aid her in the
compulsion of the animal: " Dog, dog, bite pig,
pig won't go over the brook, and I shan't get
home to night. Stick, stick, beat dog," &c.,
but perhaps they are not aware that they are
repeating one form of a Scandinavian incantation,
which in another is still prevalent in many
parts of France, entitled the Wizard and the
Wolf:
            LE CONJURATEUR ET LE LOUP.
        II y a un loup dedans un bois,
        Le loup ne veut pas sortir du bois.
           Ha, j'te promets, compère Brocard,
           Tu sortiras de ce lieu-là.
        Le loup n'veut pas sortir du bois:
        Il faut aller chercher le chien.
           Ha! j'te promets, &c.
        II faut aller chercher le chien,
        Le chien ne veut pas japper au loup,
        Le loup n'veut pas sortir du bois.
           Ha! j'te promets, &c.

[There is a wolf within the wood; the wolf will not
come out of the wood. " Ha! I warn you, Gossip
Brocard, thou wilt have to come out of that," &c.]
* See Household Words, vol. xix.

So it goes on through stick, fire, water, calf,
butcher, all of whom refuse to act, until at last
the devil is applied to, who is willing enough to
do anything at all; and Gossip Brocard has to
come out of the wood as fast as he can.

The next class named by the commission as
one of which, they shall be glad to collect
instances, are ballads, or songs conveying moral
lessons. In the south of France, probably from
its near neighbourhood to Spain, the native
country of proverbs, such lessons are conveyed
in that pithy shape; the dramatic, or ballad
form, is more prevalent in the north.

Here is a Breton ballad, showing how shameful
a thing is a lie:

        " Adieu m'amie, je m'en vas, (bis)
         Je m'en vas faire un tour à Nantes,
         Puisque le roi me le commande.