FOLK SONGS OF PROVENCE.

Little I murmur against my load of woe—Our love will never fail, nor yet decline;For to behold thy form contents me so,To see thee laugh with those red lips of thine.Dost thou say not a word when past I go?This of thy love for me is most sure sign;Our love will no decline or failing knowTill in the sky the sun shall cease to shine.

Little I murmur against my load of woe—

Our love will never fail, nor yet decline;

For to behold thy form contents me so,

To see thee laugh with those red lips of thine.

Dost thou say not a word when past I go?

This of thy love for me is most sure sign;

Our love will no decline or failing know

Till in the sky the sun shall cease to shine.

Karro, the day-labourer (to whom we will give the credit of inventing this song), would not, if he could, put one jot of his burden on Filomena of the Red Lips. Provided she laughs, he is sufficiently blest. It so happens that Filomena is his master's granddaughter; hence, alas! the need of silence as the sign of love. The wealthy old peasant has sworn that the child of his dead son shall never wed a penniless lad, who might have starved last winter if he had not given him work to do, out of sheer charity. Karro comes to a desperate resolution: he will go down to Reggio and make his fortune. When he thinks it over, he feels quite confident of success: other folks have brought back lots of money to Bova out of the great world, and why should not he? In the early morning he calls Filomena to bid her a cheerful farewell:

Come hither! run! thy friend must go away;Come with a kiss—the time is flying fast.Sure am I thou thy word wilt not betray,And for remembrance' sake my heart thou hast.Weep not because I leave thee for a day—Nay, do not weep, for it will soon be past;And, I advise thee, heed not if they say,"Journeys like this long years are wont to last."

Come hither! run! thy friend must go away;

Come with a kiss—the time is flying fast.

Sure am I thou thy word wilt not betray,

And for remembrance' sake my heart thou hast.

Weep not because I leave thee for a day—

Nay, do not weep, for it will soon be past;

And, I advise thee, heed not if they say,

"Journeys like this long years are wont to last."

Down at Reggio, Karro makes much poetry, and, were it not for his defective education, one might think that he had been studying Byron:

If I am forced far from thine eyes to go,Doubt not, ah! never doubt my constancy;The very truth I tell, if thou wouldst know—Distance makes stronger my fidelity.On my sure faith how shouldst thou not rely?How think through distance I can faithless grow?Remember how I loved thee, and replyIf distance love like mine can overthrow.

If I am forced far from thine eyes to go,

Doubt not, ah! never doubt my constancy;

The very truth I tell, if thou wouldst know—

Distance makes stronger my fidelity.

On my sure faith how shouldst thou not rely?

How think through distance I can faithless grow?

Remember how I loved thee, and reply

If distance love like mine can overthrow.

The fact is that he has not found fortune-making quite so quick a business as he had hoped. To the sun he says, when it rises, "O Sun! thou that travellest from east to west, if thou shouldst see her whom I love, greet her from me, and see if she shall laugh. If she asks how I fare, tell her that many are my ills; if she asks not this of thee, never can I be consoled." One day, in the market place, he meets a friend of his, Toto Sgrò, who has come from Bova with wine to sell. Here is an opportunity of safely sending asonettoto the red-lipped Filomena. The public letter-writer is resorted to. This functionary gets out the stock of deep pink paper which is kept expressly in the intention of enamoured clients, and says gravely "Proceed." "An ímme lárga an' dulúcchiu tu dicússu," begins Karro. "Pray use a tongue known to Christians," interposes the scribe. Toto Sgrò, who is present, remarks in Greek that such insolence should be punished; but Karro counsels peace, and racks his brains for a poem in the Calabrese dialect. Most of the men of Bova can poetize in two languages. The poem, which is produced after a moderate amount of labour, turns chiefly on the idle talk of mischief-makers, who are sure to insinuate that the absent are in the wrong. "The tongue of people is evil speaking; it murmurs more than the water of the stream; it babbles more than the water of the sea. But what ill can folks say of us if we love each other? I love thee eternally. Love me, Filomena, and think nothing about it."

Amame, Filomena, e nu' pensare!

Towards spring-time, Karro goes to Scilla to help in the sword-fish taking; it is a bad year, and the venture does not succeed. He nearly loses courage—fate seems so thoroughly against him. Just then he hears a piece of news: at theosteriathere is anInglesewho has set his mind on the possession of a live wolf cub. "Mad, quite mad, like allInglesi," is the comment of the inhabitants of Scilla. "Who ever heard of taking a live wolf?" Karro, as a mountaineer, sees matters in a different light. Forthwith he has an interview with the Englishman; then he vanishes from the scene for two months. "Poveru giuvinetto," says the host at the inn, "he has been caught by an old wolf instead of catching a young one!" At the end of the time, however, Karro limps up to the door with an injured leg, and hardly a ragleft to cover him; but carrying on his back a sack holding two wolf cubs, unhurt and tame as kittens. The gratifiedInglesegives a bountiful reward; he is not the first of his race who has acted as thedeus ex machinaof a love-play on an Italian stage. Nothing remains to be done but for Karro to hasten back to Bova. Yet a kind of uneasiness mixes with his joy. What has Filomena been doing and thinking all this while! He holds his heart in suspense at the sight of her beauty:

In all the world fair women met my gaze,But none I saw who could with thee compare;I saw the dames whom most the Rhegians praise,And by the thought of thee they seemed not fair.When thou art dressed to take the morning airThe sun stands still in wonder and amaze;If thou shouldst scorn thy love of other days,I go a wanderer, I know not where.

In all the world fair women met my gaze,

But none I saw who could with thee compare;

I saw the dames whom most the Rhegians praise,

And by the thought of thee they seemed not fair.

When thou art dressed to take the morning air

The sun stands still in wonder and amaze;

If thou shouldst scorn thy love of other days,

I go a wanderer, I know not where.

The story ends well. Filomena proves as faithful as she is fair; Karro's leg is quickly cured, and the old man gives his consent to the marriage—nay more, feeble as he is now, he is glad to hand over the whole management of the farm to his son-in-law. Thus the young couple start in life with the three inestimable blessings which a Greek poet reckons as representing the sum total of human prosperity: a full granary, a dairy-house to make cheese in, and a fine pig.

In collections of Tuscan and Sicilian songs it is common to find a goodly number placed under the heading "Delle loro bellezze." The Greek songs of Calabria that exactly answer to this description are few. A new Zeuxis might successfully paint an unseen Tuscan or Sicilian girl—local Anacreons bythe score would give him the needful details: the colour of the hair and eyes, the height, complexion, breadth of shoulders, smallness of waist; nor would they forget to mention the nobility of pose and carriage,il leggiadro portamento altero, which is the crowning gift of women south of the Alps. It can be recognized at once that the poets of Sicily and Tuscany have not merely a vague admiration for beauty in general; they have an innate artistic perception of what goes to constitute the particular form of beauty before their eyes. Poorer in words and ideas, the Greek Calabrian hardly knows what to say of his beloved, except that she isdulce ridentem, "sweetly-laughing," and that she has small red lips, between which he is sure that she must carry honey—

To meli ferri s' ettunda hilúcia ...

He seems scarcely to notice whether she is fair or dark. Fortunately it is not impossible to fill in the blank spaces in the picture. The old Greek stamp has left a deep impression at home and abroad. Where there were Greeks there are still men and women whose features are cut, not moulded, and who have a peculiar symmetry of form, which is not less characteristic though it has been less discussed. A friend of mine, who accompanied the Expedition of the Thousand, was struck by the conformity of the standard of proportion to be observed in the women of certain country districts in Sicily with the rule followed in Greek sculpture; it is a pity that the subject is not taken in hand by some one who has more time to give to it than a volunteer on the march. I have said "menorwomen," for it is a strange factthat the heritage of Greek beauty seems to fall to only one sex at a time. At Athens and in Cyprus young men may be seen who would have done credit to the gymnasia, but never a handsome girl; whilst at Arles, in Sicily, and in Greek Calabria the women are easily first in the race. The typical Græco-Calabrian maiden has soft light hair, a fairness of skin which no summer heats can stain, and the straight outline of a statue. There is another pattern of beauty in Calabria: low forehead, straight, strongly-marked eyebrows, dark, blue, serious eyes, lithe figure, elastic step. Place beside the women of the last type a man dyed copper-colour, with black, lank locks, and the startled look of a wild animal. The Greeks have many dark faces, and many ugly faces, too; for that matter, uncompromising plainness was always amongst the possibilities of an Hellenic physiognomy. But the beautiful dark girl and her lank-locked companion do not belong to them. Whom they do belong to is an open question; perhaps to those early Brettians who dwelt in the forest of the Syla, despised by the Greeks as savages, and docketed by the Romans, without rhyme or reason, as the descendants of escaped criminals. Calabria offers an inviting field to the ethnologist. It is probable that the juxtaposition of various races has not led in any commensurate degree to a mixture of blood. Each commune is a unit perpetually reformed out of the same constituents. Till lately intermarriage was carried to such a pitch that it was rare to meet with a man in a village who was not closely related to every other inhabitant of it.

The Greeks of Terra d'Otranto bear a strong physicalresemblance to the Greeks of Calabria Ultra. It is fifty or sixty years since the Hon. R. Keppel Craven remarked a "striking regularity of feature and beauty of complexion" in the women of Martano and Calimera. At Martano they have a pretty song in praise of some incomparable maid:

My Sun, where art thou going? Stay to seeHow passing beautiful is she I love.My Sun, that round and round the world dost move,Hast thou seen any beautiful as she?My Sun, that hast the whole world travelled round,One beautiful as she thou hast not found!

My Sun, where art thou going? Stay to see

How passing beautiful is she I love.

My Sun, that round and round the world dost move,

Hast thou seen any beautiful as she?

My Sun, that hast the whole world travelled round,

One beautiful as she thou hast not found!

Next to his lady's laughter, the South Italian Greek worships the sun. It is the only feature in nature to which he pays much heed. In common with other forms of modern Greek the Calabrian possesses the beautiful periphrase for sunset,o íglio vasiléggui(ὁ ἥλιος βασιλεύει). Language, which is altogether a kind of poetry, has not anything more profoundly poetic. There is a brisk, lively ring in the "Sun up!" of the American Far West; but an intellectual Atlantic flows between it and the Greek ascription of kingship, of heroship, to the Day-giver at the end of his course—

Wie herrlich die Sonne dort untergeht,So stirbt ein Held! Anbetungswürdig!

Wie herrlich die Sonne dort untergeht,

So stirbt ein Held! Anbetungswürdig!

When we were young, were not our hearts stirred to their inmost depths by this?

The love-songs of Bova include one composed by a young man who had the ill-luck to get into prison. "Remember," he says, "the words I spoke to thee when we were seated on the grass; for the love ofChrist, remember them, so as not to make my life a torment. Think not that I shall stay in here for ever; already I have completed one day. But if it should happen that thou art forgetful of my words, beyond a doubt this prison awaits me!" The singer seems to wish it to be inferred that his line of conduct in the given case will be such as to entitle him to board and lodging at the expense of the state for the rest of his days. In times still recent, prisoners at Bova could see and be seen, and hear and be heard, through the bars. Thus the incarcerated lover had not to wait long for an answer, which must have greatly relieved his mind: "The words that thou didst say to me on the tender grass, I remember them—I forget them not. I would not have thee say them over again; but be sure I love thee. Night and day I go to church, and of Christ I ask this grace: 'My Christ, make short the hours—bring to me him whom I love!'"

The Greeks have a crafty proverb, "If they see me I laugh; but if not, I rob and run." A Græco-Italic word1,maheri, or "poignard," has been suggested as the origin ofMafia, the name of one of the two great organisations for crime which poison the social atmosphere of southern Italy. The way of looking upon an experience of the penalties of the law, not as a retribution or a disgrace, but as a simple mischance, still prevails in the provinces of the ex-kingdom of Naples. "The prisons," says a Calabrian poet, "are made for honest men." Yet the people of Calabria are rather to be charged with a confusion of moral sense than with a completely debased morality. Whathas been said of the modern Greek could with equal truth be said of them, whether Greeks or otherwise: put them upon their point of honour and they may be highly trusted. At a date when, in Sicily, no one went unarmed, it was the habit in Calabria to leave doors and windows unfastened during an absence of weeks or months; and it is still remembered how, after the great earthquake of 1783, five Calabrians who happened to be at Naples brought back to the treasury 200 ducats (received by them out of the royal bounty) on learning, through private sources, that their homesteads were safe. The sort of honesty here involved is not so common as it might be, even under the best of social conditions.

In that year of catastrophe—1783—it is more than possible that some of the Greek-speaking communities were swallowed up, leaving no trace behind. Calabria was the theatre of a series of awful transformation scenes; heroism and depravity took strange forms, and men intent on pillage were as ready to rush into the tottering buildings as men intent on rescue. A horrid rejoicing kept pace with terror and despair. In contrast to all this was the surprising calmness with which in some cases the ordeal was faced. At Oppido, a place originally Greek, a pretty young woman, aged nineteen years, was immured for thirty hours, and shortly after herhusbandhad extricated her she became a mother. Dolomieu asked what had been her thoughts in her living tomb; to which she simply answered, "I waited." The Prince of Scilla and four thousand people were swept into the sea by a single volcanic wave. Only the mountains stood firm. Bova, piled against the rock like a child's card-city,suffered no harm, whilst the most solid structures on the shore and in the plain were pitched about as ships in a storm. Still, in the popular belief the whole mischief was brewed deep down in the innermost heart of Aspromonte. It may be that the theory grew out of the immemorial dread inspired by the Bitter Mount—a dread which seems in a way prophetic of the dark shadow it was fated to cast across the fair page of Italian redemption.

A thousand years ago every nook and cranny in the Calabrian mountains had its Greek hermit. Now and then one of these anchorites descended to the towns, and preached to flocks of penitents in the Greek idiom, which was understood by all. Under Byzantine rule the people generally adhered to the Greek rite; nor was it without the imposition of the heavy hand of Rome that they were finally brought to renounce it. As late as the sixteenth century the liturgies were performed in Greek at Rossano, and perhaps much later in the hill-towns, where there are women who still treasure up scraps of Greek prayers. Greek, in an older sense than any attached to the ritual of the Eastern Church, is the train of thought marked out in this line from a folk-song of Bova: "O Juro pu en chi jerusia" ("The Lord who hath not age"). The Italian imagines the Creator as an old man; witness, to take only one example, the frescoes on the walls of the Pisan Campo Santo. A Tuscan proverb, which means no evil, though it would not very well bear translating—"Lascia fare a Dio che è Santo Vecchio"—shows how in this, as in other respects, Italian art is but the concrete presentation of Italian popular sentiment. The grander idea of"a Divine power which grows not old" seems very like an exotic in Italy. Without yielding too much to the weakness of seeking analogies, one other coincidence may be mentioned in passing. The Greek mother soothes her crying child by telling him that "the wild doves drink at theholy sea." This "ago Thalassia" recalls theἅλς δὶαof the greatest folk-poet who ever lived.Thalassiais now replaced in ordinary conversation by the Italianmare; indeed, in Terra d'Otranto it is currently supposed to be the proper name of a saint. The next step would naturally lead to the establishment of a cult of St Thalassia; and this may have been the kind of way in which were established a good many of those cults that pass for evidences of nature-worship.

The language of the Græco-Calabrian songs, mixed though it is with numberless Calabrese corruptions, is still far more Greek than the actual spoken tongue. So it always happens; poetry, whether the highest or the lowest, is the shrine in which the purer forms of speech are preserved. The Greeks of Calabria are at present bi-lingual, reminding one of Horace's "Canusini more bilinguis." It is a comparatively new state of things. Henry Swinburne says that the women he saw knew only Greek or "Albanese," as he calls it, which, he adds, "they pronounce with great sweetness of accent." The advance of Calabrese is attended by the decline of Greek, and a systematic examination of the latter has not been undertaken a moment too soon. The good work, begun by Domenico Comparetti and Giuseppe Morosi, is being completed by professor Astorre Pellegrini, who haspublished one volume ofStudi sui dialetti Greco-Calabro di Bova, which will be followed in due course by a second instalment. I am glad to be able to record my own debt to this excellent and most courteous scholar. He informs me that he hopes to finish his researches by a thorough inspection of the stones and mural tablets in Calabrian graveyards. The dead have elsewhere told so much about the living that the best results are to be anticipated.

It need scarcely be said that the leavings of the past in the southern extremity of Italy are not confined to the narrow space where a Greek idiom is spoken. There is not even warrant for supposing them to lie chiefly within that area. The talisman which the hunter or brigand wears next to his heart, believing that it renders him invulnerable; the bagpipe which calls the sheep in the hills, and which the wild herds of swine follow docilely over the marshes; the faggot which the youth throws upon his mother's threshold before he crosses it after the day's toil; the kick, aimed against the house door, which signifies the last summons of the debtor; the shout of "Barca!" raised by boys who lie in wait to get the first glimpse of the returning fishing fleet, expecting largess for the publication of the good news; the chaff showered down by vine-dressers upon bashful maids and country lads going home from market; the abuse of strangers who venture into the vineyards at the vintage season—these are among the things of the young world that may be sought in Calabria.

Other things there are to take the mind back to the time when the coins the peasant turns up with his hoewere fresh from the mint at Locri, and when the mildest of philosophies was first—

. . . .dimly taughtIn old Crotona;

. . . .dimly taught

In old Crotona;

wild flowers as sweet as those that made Persephone forsake the plain of Enna; maidens as fair as the five beautiful virgins after whom Zeuxis painted hisHelen; grasshoppers as loudly chirping as the "cricket" that saved the prize to Eunomus; and, high in the transparent air, the stars at which Pythagoras gazed straining his ears to catch their eternal harmonies.

Footnote 1:In classical Greek,μάχαιρα.

On a day in the late autumn it happened to me to be standing at a window looking down into an untidy back street at Avignon. It was a way of getting through the hours between a busy morning and a busy evening—hours which did not seem inclined to go. If ever man be tempted to upbraid the slowness of the flight of time, it is surely in the vacant intervals of travel. The prospect at the window could hardly be called enlivening; by-and-by, however, the dulness of the outlook was lessened a little. The sounds of a powerful and not unmusical voice came along the street; people hastened to their doors, and in a minute or so a young lame man made his appearance. He was singing Provençal songs. Here was the last of the troubadours!

If it needed some imagination to see in this humble minstrel the representative of the courtly adepts in the gay science, still his relationship to them was not purely fanciful. The itinerant singer used to be the troubadour of the poor. No doubt his more illustrious brother grudged him the name. "I am astonished," said Giraud Riquier to Alfonso of Aragon, "that folks confound the troubadours with those ignorant and uncouth persons who, as soon as they can play some screeching instrument, go through the streets asking alms and singing before a vile rabble;" and Alfonsoanswered that in future the noble appellation of "joglaria" should be granted no longer to mountebanks who went about with dancing dogs, goats, monkeys, or puppets, imitating the song of birds, or for a meagre pittance singing before people of base extraction, but that they should be called "bufos," as in Lombardy. Giraud Riquier was not benevolently inclined when he embodied in verse his protest and the King's endorsement of it; yet his words now lend an ancient dignity to the class they were meant to bring into contempt. The lame young man at Avignon had no dancing dogs, nor did he mimic the song of birds—an art still practised with wonderful skill in Italy.1He helped out his entertainment by another device, one suitable to an age which reads; he sold printed songs, and he presented "letters." If you bought two sous' worth of songs you were entitled to a "letter." It has to be explained that "letters" form a kind of fortune-telling, very popular in Provence. A number of small scraps of paper are attached to a ring; you pull off one at hazard, and on it you find a full account of the fate reserved to you. Nothing more simple. As to the songs, loose sheets containing four or five of them are to be had for fifteen centimes. I have seen on the quay at Marseilles an open bookstall, where four thousand of these songs are advertised for sale. Some are in Provençal, some in French; many are interlarded with prose sentences, in which case they are called "cansounetto émé parla." Formerly the same style of composition bore thename ofcantefable. The subjects chosen are comic, or sentimental, or patriotic, or, again, simply local. There is, for example, a dialogue between a proprietor and a lodger. "Workman, why are you always grumbling?" asks the "moussu," who speaks French, as do angels and upper-class people generally in Provençal songs. "If your old quarters are to be pulled down, a fine new one will be built instead. Ere long the town of Marseilles will become a paradise, and the universe will exclaim, 'What a marvel! Fine palaces replace miserable hovels!'" For all that, replies the workman in Provençal patois, the abandonment of his old quarter costs a pang to a childdeis Carmes(an old part of Marseilles, standing where the Greek town stood). It was full of attraction to him. There his father lived before him; there his friends had grown with him to manhood; there he had brought up his children, and lived content. The proprietor argues that it was far less clean than could be wished—there was too much insectivorous activity in it. He tells the workman that he can find a lodging, after all not very expensive, in some brand-new building outside the town; the railway will bring him to his work. Unconvinced, the workman returns to his refrain, "Regreterai toujour moun vieil Marsïo." If the rhymes are bad, if the subject is prosaic, we have here at least the force of a fact pregnant with social danger. Is it only at Marseilles that the grand improvements of modern days mean, for the man who lives by his labour, the break-up of his home, the destruction of his household gods, the dispersion of all that sweetened and hallowed his poverty? The songs usually bear an author's name; but theauthors of the original pieces, though they may enjoy a solid popularity in Provence, are rarely known to a wider fame. One of them, M. Marius Féraud, whose address I hold in my hands, will be happy to compose songs or romances for marriages, baptisms, and other such events, either in Provençal or in French, introducing any surname and Christian name indicated, and arranging the metre so as to suit the favourite tune of the person who orders the poem.

Street ditties occupy an intermediate place between literate and illiterate poesy. Once the repertory of the itinerantbufowas drawn from a source which might be called popular without qualifying the term. With the pilgrim and the roving apprentice he was a chief agent in the diffusion of ballads. Even now he has a right to be remembered in any account of the songs of Provence; but, having given him mention, we must leave the streets to go to the well-heads of popular inspiration—the straggling village, the isolated farm, the cottage alone on the byeway.

When in the present century there was a revival of Provençal literature, after a suspension of some five hundred years, the poets who devoted their not mean gifts to this labour of love discerned, with true insight, that the only Provençal who was still thoroughly alive was the peasant. Through the long lapse of time in the progress of which Provence had lost its very name—becoming a thing of French departments—the peasant, it was discovered, had not changed much; acting on which discovery, the new Provençal school produced two works of a value that could not have been reached had it been attempted either to give an archaic dress to the ideas and interests of themodern world, or to galvanise the dry bones of mediæval romance into a dubious animation. These works areMirèioandMargarido. Mistral, with the idealising touch of the imaginative artist, paints the Provence of the valley of the Rhone, whilst Marius Trussy photographs the ruder and wilder Provence of mountain and torrent. Taken together, the two poems perfectly illustrate theWahrheit und Dichtungof the life of the people whose songs we have to study.

Since there is record of them the Provençals have danced and sung. They may be said to have furnished songs and dances to all France, and even to lands far beyond the border of France. A French critic relates how, when he was young, he went night after night to a certain theatre in Paris to see a dance performed by a company of English pantomimists. The dancers gradually stripped a staff, or may-pole, of its many-coloured ribbons, which became in their hands a sort of moving kaleidoscope. This, that he thought at the time to be an exclusively English invention, was the old Provençal dance of theolivette. In the Carnival season dances of an analogous kind are still performed, here and there; by bands of young men, who march in appropriate costume from place to place, led by their harlequin and by a player on thegalooubé, the little pipe which should be considered the national instrument of Provence. Harlequin improvises couplets in a sarcastic vein, and the crowd of spectators is not slow to apply each sally to some well-known person; whence it comes that Ash Wednesday carries a sense of relief to many worthy individuals. May brings with it more dances and mildersongs. Young men plant a tree, with a nosegay atop, before their sweethearts' doors, and then go singing—

Lou premier jour de mai,O Diou d'eime!Quand tout se renouveloRossignolet!Quand tout se renouvelo.

Lou premier jour de mai,

O Diou d'eime!

Quand tout se renouvelo

Rossignolet!

Quand tout se renouvelo.

The great business of the month is sheep-shearing, a labour celebrated in a special song. "When the month of May comes, the shearers come: they shear by night, they shear by day; for a month, and a fortnight, and three weeks they shear the wool of these white sheep." When the shearers go, the washers come; when the washers go, the carders come; then come the spinners, the weavers, the buyers, and the ragmen who gather up the bits. Across the nonsense of which it is composed the ditty reflects the old excitement caused in the lonely homesteads by the annual visit of the plyers of these several trades, who turned everything upside down and brought strange news of the world. At harvest there was, and there is yet, a great gathering at the larger farms. Troops of labourers assemble to do the needful work. Sometimes, after the evening meal, a curious song called the "Reapers' Grace" is sung before the men go to rest. It has two parts: the first is a variation on the first chapter of Genesis. Adam andnouestro maire Evoare put into the Garden of Eden. Adam is forbidden to eat of the fruit of life; he eats thereof, and the day of his death is foretold him. He will be buried under a palm, a cypress, and an olive, and out of the wood of the olive theCross will be made. The second part, sung to a quick, lively air, is an expression of goodwill to the master and the mistress of the farm, every verse ending, "Adorem devotoment Jesù eme Mario." A few years ago the harvest led on naturally to the vintage. It is not so now. The vines of Provence, excellent in themselves, though never turned to the same account as those of Burgundy or Bordeaux, have been almost completely ruined by the phylloxera. The Provençal was satisfied if his wine was good enough to suit his own taste and that of his neighbours; thus he had not laid by wealth to support him in the evil day that has come. "Is there no help?" I asked of a man of the poorer class. "Only rain, much rain, can do good," he answered, "and," he added, "we have not had a drop for four months." The national disaster has been borne with the finest fortitude, but in Provence at least there seems to be small faith in any method of grappling with it. The vines, they say, are spoilt by the attempt to submit them to an artificial deluge; so one after the other, the peasant roots them up, and tries to plant cabbages or what not. Three hundred years back the Provençals would have known what measures to take: the offending insect would have been prosecuted. Between 1545 and 1596 there was a run of these remarkable trials at Arles. In 1565 the Arlesiens asked for the expulsion of the grasshoppers. The case came before the Tribunal de l'Officialité, and Maître Marin was assigned to the insects as counsel. He defended his clients with much zeal. Since the accused had been created, he argued that they were justified in eating what was necessary to them. Theopposite counsel cited the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and sundry other animals mentioned in Scripture, as having incurred severe penalties. The grasshoppers got the worst of it, and were ordered to quit the territory, with a threat of anathematizatiom from the altar, to be repeated till the last of them had obeyed the sentence of the honourable court.

One night in the winter of 1819 there was a frost which, had it been a few times repeated, would have done as final mischief to the olives as the phylloxera has done to the vines. The terror of that night is remembered still. Corn, vine, and olive—these were the gifts of the Greek to Provence, and the third is the most precious of all. The olive has here an Eastern importance; the Provençals would see a living truth in the story of how the trees said unto it, "Reign thou over us." In the flowering season the slightest sharpness in the air sends half the rural population bare-foot upon a pilgrimage to the nearest St Briggitte or St Rossoline. The olive harvest is the supreme event of the year. It has its song too. In the warm days of St Martin's summer, says the late Damase Arbaud, some worker in the olive woods will begin to sing of a sudden—

Ai rescountrat ma mio—diluns.

It is a mere nonsense song respecting the meeting of a lover and his lass on every day of the week, she being each day on her way to buy provisions, and he giving her the invariable advice that she had better come back, because it is raining. Were it the rarest poetry the effect could be hardly more beautiful than it is. When the first voice has sung, "I met mylove ..." ascending slowly from a low note, the whole group of olive-gatherers take it up, then the next, and again the next, till the country-side is made all musical by the swell and fall of sound sent forth from every grey coppice; and even long after the nearer singers have ceased, others unseen in the distance still raise the high-pitched call, "Come back, my love, come back! ... come back!"

On the first of November it is customary in Provence for families to meet and dine. The fruits of the earth are garnered, the year's business is over and done. The year has brought perhaps new faces into the family; very likely it has taken old faces away. Towards evening the bells begin to toll for the vigil of the feast of All Souls. Tears come into the eyes of the older guests, and the children are hurried off to bed. Why should they be present at this letting loose of grief? To induce them to retire with good grace, they are allowed to take with them what is left of the dessert—chestnuts, or grapes, or figs. The child puts a portion of his spoils at the bottom of his bed for thearmettes: so are called the spirits of the dead who are still in a state of relation with the living, not being yet finally translated into their future abode. Children are told that if they are good thearmetteswill kiss them this night; if they are naughty, they will scratch their little feet.

The Provençal religious songs, poor though they are from a literary point of view, yet possess more points of interest than can be commonly looked for in folk-songs which treat of religion. They contain frequent allusions to beliefs that have to be sought either in the earliest apocryphal writings of the Christianæra, or in the lately unearthed records of rabbinical tradition. Various of them have regard to what is still, as M. Lenthéric says, "one of the great popular emotions of the South of France"—the reputed presence there of Mary Magdalene. M. Lenthéric is convinced that certain Jewish Christians, flying from persecution at home, did come to Provence (between the ports of which and the East there was constant communication) a short time after the Crucifixion. He is further inclined to give credit to the impression that Mary Magdalene and her companions were among these fugitives. I will not go into the reasons that have been urged against the story by English and German scholars; it is enough for us that it is a popular credence of very ancient origin. One side issue of it is particularly worth noting. A little servant girl named Sara is supposed to have accompanied the Jewish emigrants, and her the gypsies of Provence have adopted as their patroness. Once a year they pay their respects to her tomb at Saintes Maries de la Mer. This is almost the only case in which the gypsy race has shown any disposition to identify itself with a religious cultus. The fairy legend of Tarascon is another offshoot from the main tradition. "Have you seen the Tarasque?" I was asked in the course of a saunter through that town one cold morning between the hours of seven and eight. It seemed that the original animal was kept in a stall. To stimulate my anxiety to make its acquaintance I was handed the portrait of a beast, half hedgehog, half hippopotamus, out of whose somewhat human jaw dangled the legs of a small boy. Later I heard the story from the lips of the sister ofthe landlord at the primitive little inn; much did it gain from the vivacious grace of the narrator, in whom there is as surely proof positive of a Greek descent as can be seen in any of the more famous daughters of Arles. "When the friends of our Lord landed in Provence, St Mary Magdalene went to Sainte Baume, St Lazarus to Marseilles, and St Martha came here to Tarascon. Now there was a terrible monster called the Tarasque, which was desolating all the country round and carrying off all the young children to eat. When St Martha was told of the straits the folks were in, she went out to meet the monster with a piece of red ribbon in her hand. Soon it came, snorting fire out of its nostrils; but the saint threw the red ribbon over its neck, and lo! it grew quite still and quiet, and followed her back into the town as if it had been a good dog. To keep the memory of this marvel, we at Tarascon have a wooden Tarasque, which we take round the town at Whitsuntide with much rejoicing. About once in twenty years there is a very grandfêteindeed, and people come from far, far off. I have—naturally—seen this grand celebration only once." A gleam of coquetry lit up the long eyes: our friend clearly did not wish to be supposed to have an experience ranging over too long a period. Then she went on, "You must know that at Beaucaire, just there across the Rhone, the folks have been always ready to die of jealousy of our Tarasque. Once upon a time they thought they would have one as well as we; so they made the biggest Tarasque that ever had been dreamt of. How proud they were! But, alas! when the day came to take it round the town, it was found that it would not come out of the door of theworkshop! Ah! those dear Beaucairos!" This I believe to be a pure fable, like the rest; to the good people of Tarascon it appears the most pleasing part of the whole story. My informant added, with a merry laugh, "There came this way an Englishman—a very sceptical Englishman. When he heard about the difficulty of the Beaucairos he asked, 'Why did they not have recourse to St Martha?'"

As I have strayed into personal reminiscence, the record of one other item of conversation will perhaps be allowed. That same morning I went to breakfast at the house of a Provençal friend to meet the ablest exponent of political positivism, the Radical deputy for Montmartre. Over our host's strawberries (strawberries never end at Tarascon) I imparted my newly acquired knowledge. When it came to the point of saying that certain elderly persons were credibly stated to have preserved a lively faith in the authenticity of the legend, M. Clémenceau listened with a look of such unmistakable concern that I said, half amused, "You do not believe much in poetry?" The answer was characteristic. "Yes, I believe in it much; but is it necessary to poetry that the people should credit such absurdities?" Is it necessary? Possibly Marius Trussy, who inveighs so passionately against "lou progrê," would say that it is. Anyhow the Tarasques of the world are doomed; whether they will be without successors is a different question. Some one has said that mankind has always lived upon illusions, and always will, the essential thing being to change the nature of these illusions from time to time, so as to bring them into harmony with the spirit of the age.

Provençal folk-songs have but few analogies with the literature which heedlessly, though beyond recall, has been named Provençal. The poetry of the Miejour was a literary orchid of the fabulous sort that has neither root nor fruit. A chance stanza, addressed to some high-born Blancoflour, finds its way occasionally into the popular verse of Provence with the marks of lettered authorship still clinging to it; but further than this the resemblance does not go. The love poets of the people make use of a flower language, which is supposed to be a legacy of the Moors. Thyme accompanies a declaration; the violet means doubt or uneasiness; rosemary signifies complaint; nettles announce a quarrel. The course of true love nowhere flows less smoothly than in old Provence. As soon as a country girl is suspected of having a liking for some youth, she is set upon by her family as if she were guilty of a monstrous crime. A microscopic distinction of rank, a divergence in politics, or a deficiency of money will be snatched as the excuse for putting the lover under the ban of absolute proscription. From the inexplicable obstacles placed in the way of lovers it follows that a large proportion of Provençal marriages are the result of an elopement. The expedient never fails; Provençal parents do not lock up their runaway daughters in convents where no one can get at them. The delinquents are married as fast as possible. What is more, no evil is thought or spoken of them. To make assurance doubly sure, a curious formality is observed. The girl calls upon two persons, secretly convened for the purpose, to bear witness that she carries off her lover, who afterwards protests that hispart in the comedy was purely passive. In less than twenty years the same drama is enacted with Margarido, the daughter, in therôleof Mario the mother.

L'herbo que grioToujours reverdilho;L'herbo d'amourReverdilho toujours.

L'herbo que grio

Toujours reverdilho;

L'herbo d'amour

Reverdilho toujours.

The plant of love grows where there are young hearts; but how comes it that middle-aged hearts turn inevitably to cast iron? There is one song which has the right to be accepted as the typical love-song of Provence. Mistral adapted it to his own use, and it figures in his poem as the "Chanson de Majali." My translation follows as closely as may be after the popular version which is sung from the Comtat Venaissin to the Var:

Margaret! my first love,Do not say me nay!A morning music thou must have,A waking roundelay.—Your waking music irks me,And irk me all who play;If this goes on much longerI'll drown myself one day.—If this goes on much longer,And thou wilt drown one day,Why, then a swimmer I will be,And save thee sans delay.—If then a swimmer thou wilt be,And save me sans delay,Then I will be an eel, and slipFrom 'twixt thy hands away.—If thou wilt be an eel, and slipFrom 'twixt my hands away,Why, I will be the fishermanWhom all the fish obey.—If thou wilt be the fishermanWhom all the fish obey,Then I will be the tender grassThat yonder turns to hay.—If thou wilt be the tender grassThat yonder turns to hay,Why, then a mower I will be,And mow thee in the may.—If thou a mower then wilt be,And mow me in the may,I, as a little hare, will goIn yonder wood to stray.—If thou a little hare wilt goIn yonder wood to stray,Then will I come, a hunter bold,And have thee as my prey.—If thou wilt come a hunter boldTo have me as thy prey,Then I will be the endive smallIn yonder garden gay.—If thou wilt be the endive smallIn yonder garden gay,Then I will be the falling dew,And fall on thee alway.—If thou wilt be the falling dew,And fall on me alway,Then I will be the white, white roseOn yonder thorny spray.—If thou wilt be the white, white roseOn yonder thorny spray,Then I will be the honey bee,And kiss thee all the day.—If thou wilt be the honey bee,And kiss me all the day,Then I will be in yonder heavenThe star of brightest ray.—If thou wilt be in yonder heavenThe star of brighest ray,Then I will be the dawn, and weShall meet at break of day.—If thou wilt be the dawn, so weMay meet at break of day,Then I will be a nun professed,A nun of orders grey.—If thou wilt be a nun professed,A nun of orders grey,Then I will be the prior, and thouTo me thy sins must say.—If thou wilt be the prior, and ITo 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 earthThat on thee they shall lay.—If thou wilt be the holy earthThat on me they shall lay—Well—since some gallant I must have,I will not say thee nay.

Margaret! my first love,

Do not say me nay!

A morning music thou must have,

A waking roundelay.

—Your waking music irks me,

And irk me all who play;

If this goes on much longer

I'll drown myself one day.

—If this goes on much longer,

And thou wilt drown one day,

Why, then a swimmer I will be,

And save thee sans delay.

—If then a swimmer thou wilt be,

And save me sans delay,

Then I will be an eel, and slip

From 'twixt thy hands away.

—If thou wilt be an eel, and slip

From 'twixt my hands away,

Why, I will be the fisherman

Whom all the fish obey.

—If thou wilt be the fisherman

Whom all the fish obey,

Then I will be the tender grass

That yonder turns to hay.

—If thou wilt be the tender grass

That yonder turns to hay,

Why, then a mower I will be,

And mow thee in the may.

—If thou a mower then wilt be,

And mow me in the may,

I, as a little hare, will go

In yonder wood to stray.

—If thou a little hare wilt go

In yonder wood to stray,

Then will I come, a hunter bold,

And have thee as my prey.

—If thou wilt come a hunter bold

To have me as thy prey,

Then I will be the endive small

In yonder garden gay.

—If thou wilt be the endive small

In yonder garden gay,

Then I will be the falling dew,

And fall on thee alway.

—If thou wilt be the falling dew,

And fall on me alway,

Then I will be the white, white rose

On yonder thorny spray.

—If thou wilt be the white, white rose

On yonder thorny spray,

Then I will be the honey bee,

And kiss thee all the day.

—If thou wilt be the honey bee,

And kiss me all the day,

Then I will be in yonder heaven

The star of brightest ray.

—If thou wilt be in yonder heaven

The star of brighest ray,

Then I will be the dawn, and we

Shall meet at break of day.

—If thou wilt be the dawn, so we

May meet at break of day,

Then I will be a nun professed,

A nun of orders grey.

—If thou wilt be a nun professed,

A nun of orders grey,

Then I will be the prior, and thou

To me thy sins must say.

—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 odeκ'ἐῢς κόρην. 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 associations which, without giving a personal or political splendour such as that attached to Magna Græcia, lend nevertheless to Provençal 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 Phocæa, in Asia Minor, and put into asmall creek on the Provençal coast, the port of the future Marseilles. 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 shores an ambassador bearing gifts and overtures of friendly intercourse. When the ambassador 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 Provençal 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 theElysii Campiof 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. Thelegend 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 assembled 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 multitude of sepulchres which Dante sawove '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 deadεὐπλοῖ.

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 associated withthe women of Arles. As a rule, the Provençal 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 entitled 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. Lenthéric 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 horsemen 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 amusement 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 calledκεράτισις, and the bull in the act of submission is represented on a large number of Massaliote and other coins.

Marseilles, which has lost the art and the type of Greece, has kept the Greek temperament. It is nomore 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 inémeutesthe proverbialquattordici rebellioniof "loyal" Parthenope; and quickness of intelligence, love of display, mobility of feeling, together with an astounding vitality, belong as much to Marseillais as to Neapolitan. The people of Marseilles, the most thriftless in France, have thriven three thousand years, and are thriving now, in spite of the readiness of each small middle-class 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 Marseillais, "would be a fine town if it had ourCannebière." 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 Marseilles is stern; only after protest does she grant a monument to Adolphe Thiers—himself just a Greek Massaliote thrown into the French political arena. There is reason to think that Greek was a spoken tongue at Marseilles 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 Marseillais sailors was noticed by the Abbé Papon, who attributed to the same source the peculiar prosody and intonationof the street cries of Marseilles. The Provençal 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:

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