Si elle n'est plus là pour me consoler?
     Au milieu de voisins sans amour,
     Si je tombe malade au lit,
     Qui est-ce qui essuiera ma sueur?
     Qui est-ce qui me donnera une goutte d'eau?
     Qui est-ce qui ne me laissera pas mourir?

[Here is my daughter, a girl of sixteen, lying
on the tala (mortuary-table) after so much
suffering. She is lying here, dressed in her best
clothes. In her best clothes she is leaving us now,
because the Lord will no longer leave her here. . . .
Oh, how much more lovely will heaven itself be
now! But for me, alas! earth will be full of agony.
One day will be like a thousand years thinking on
thee! asking always of each one, Where is my
daughter? Oh, death, wherefore didst thou tear my
child from my breast; wherefore leave me alone here
below to weep? What wilt thou that I should do
on earth when she is no longer here to comfort me?
In the midst of relations without affection,
neighbours without love, if I fall ill in bed, who will
wipe the sweat from my brow? Who will give me
a drop of water? Who will take care lest I
die?]

One of the most curious things of all
discovered by the researches of those interested
in the proposed commission is, that they have
traced some of the burdens or choruses in use
at this day at the south of France up to the
ancient Greeks, brought to France, doubtless, by
the Phœnician colony that settled there; and
one of these refrains has been discovered to be
identical in meaning with a couplet in
hieroglyphics addressed by an Egyptian labourer to
his oxen three thousand years ago, and
interpreted by Champollion:

          Battez pour vous (bis)
               O bÅ“ufs!
          Battez pour vous,
Des boisseaux pour vos maîtres. (bis.)

[Thrash for yourselves, O oxen! Thrash for
yourselves; and bushels for your masters.]

And the hieroglyphic which is interpreted by
the monosyllable "bis," shows that repetitions
of a line were familiar to the Egyptians. The
huntsmen, the fishermen, and the shepherds,
have also their especial ditties, which almost
invariably turn upon one subject. A knight meets
a shepherdess, and offers her his love; frequently
she rejects, sometimes she yields, to the temptation.
There is one song of a much more modern
date in which a rustic beauty rejects the offers of
a wealthy burgess, saying she prefers her
sweetheart, Nicholas. The subject, as well as the
style of this last, shows that it has been
composed since the land was sufficiently peaceful to
allow the inhabitants of towns to do sometimes
more than pass as rapidly as possible from place
to place.

All sorts of burlesque or drinking songs,
provided they do not outrage decency, are to be
collected; and under this head are included the
songs they chant in dancing the dances of their
province, whatever that may be—bourée in the
south of France, for instance; rondes in the
north. In the chants with which these latter
are accompanied, there are many traces of the
heroic poetry of the middle ages; for instance,
the refrain of one of the rondes preserve the
memory of Ogier the Dane, the enemy, and
afterwards the prisoner, of Charlemagne, as told
in the romances of that date. While Ogier was
in captivity, Charlemagne decreed that any one
who pronounced his name should be put to a
cruel death. But three hundred faithful squires
braved death; and came around the palace of
Charlemagne, crying aloud as if with one voice,
Ogier! Ogier! Ogier! and Charlemagne
unwilling to lose the flower of his future knights,
had to yield and pardon Ogier the Dane. This
tradition is evidently the basis of the Breton.
chorus of the nineteenth century:

Qui est dans ce château?    | Who is in this castle?
   Ogier! Ogier! Ogier!         |    Ogier! Ogier! Ogier!
Qui est dans ce château?    | Who is in this castle?
   Beau chevalier.                 |    A gallant knight.

Even the games of children reveal traces of a
time when a different state of manners existed
to the present. When boys and girls at play
call out

La tour, prends garde       | [Tower, take care, lest thou
De te laisser abattre—      | art taken—]

it is a relic of feudal times. When they sing

Nous n'irons plus au bois,    | [We shall no longer go to
Les lauriers sont coupés—  | the wood, the laurels are cut
                                            |  down—]

we perceive that the words have been composed
in some warmer climate than that of Paris, as
no laurels grow wild in the woods so far north.

Two specimens of nursing songs or lullabies
will close this paper. The first is extremely
popular:

     Le roi a un' nourrice
     Belle comme le jour,
     Le roi a un' nourrice,
     Grand dieu d'amour,
     Belle comme le jour.
     Elle s'est endormie,
     Le dauphin dans ses bras,
     Elle s'est endormie,
     Grand Dieu! hélas!
     Le dauphin dans ses bras.
     Quand ell' s'est réveillée,
     L'a trouvé etouffé.
     Ell' le prend, l'emmaillotte,
     Ell' dit qu'ell' va laver.
     Le roi est à la f'nêtre,
     Le roi l'a vue passer.
     "Où allez-vous, nourrice?
     Le dauphin pleurera—
    —N'ayez pas peur qu'il pleurera,
     J' l'ai bien emmaillotté."
     Ell' va fair' dire un' messe
     A notr' Dame-de-Pitié.
     Au premier évangile
     L'enfant a soupiré,
     Au dernier évangile
     L'enfant s'est relevé

[The King has a nurse as fair as day (bis). She
fell asleep, the dauphin in her arms. When she
awakened, she found him smothered. She took him
and swaddled him, and said she was going to wash.
The King is at the window. The King saw her go
past. Where are you going, nurse? the dauphin
will cry. Do not fear he will cry, I have swaddled
him well. She causes a mass to be said at Our