At stone at the churchyard gate. Combourg also, at Lohéac, and at many other places, the same rights and customs existed; the bride must sing, or sing and dance, upon a specified spot near the church, and in some cases she had to declare that she owed a kiss to the seigneurie. A more curious and complicated custom obtained in very early times at the Benedictine priory of Saint-Sauveur-des-Landes, as it is described by one of the same community, writing in the sixteenth century. Here the bride had to go straight from the church, when the marriage mass had been said, and to present to the prior a kiss and a nosegay tied with green or blue ribbons; she had then to sing nine songs, and while singing to dance up and down the hall with the prior, or with one of the community representing him, if he himself was too old, fat, or infirm; after which she and her company were served with good wine, honestly, as the old phrase ran, meaning without stint. In default of this, the manuscript goes on to say, upon the following Sunday, after high mass at the church of Saint Sauveur, the prior shall strip shoe and hose from the bride's left foot (which may sometimes have been a not unpleasant duty), "and she shall thus go home without covering upon her skin, and further shall pay sixty sols in fine.” The individual character of the ancient songs is as interesting as the place that they held in the life of the fourteenth century. They were the peasant's books; they stood to him in the place of newspapers; by means of them the old traditions were handed on from father to son, the old stories of by-gone days that were passing into legend. And by means of them also local history and current news were carried from place to place: that strange force which is public opinion and which underlay even the peasant's servitude, was nourished; and a link was made that joined the most isolated farms and the remotest districts together. The practice of what one may call professional minstrelsy was more or less confined to a class of singers that frequented the castles and towns; but the habit of singing was universal, and, with the splendid memories of those who can neither read nor write, to hear a song once, however innumerable its verses, was all that was necessary. True, it might be repeated with some variations and some lack of sense, but that mattered little; even to-day, when the repetition of centuries has left many ballads absolutely devoid of either rhyme or meaning, the peasant is amply content with them and sees nothing lacking. Strangers journeying from place to place, fighting-men riding in companies across the country, were naturally the great spreaders of songs in the more central districts bordering the great roads; as, since then, French soldiers have carried French music so far abroad that an ancient Poitevin Noël has been found among an Indian tribe in the depths of Canada, and a ballad of Provence is sung by the Annamites far inland from Saigon. But from farm to farm in the byeways of High Brittany where there was little of passing traffic, songs were mostly carried, as was everything else, indeed, by the packman, the travelling hawker of all sorts of wares, the Little Merchant or gentil Mercelot as he is called in many a ballad in which he plays a part. He, who went everywhere and saw every one, who was as welcome to castle as to cottage, and most welcome where fewest came and least was known of the outer world, was the minstrel of the country-side, the singer of songs, the teller of tales, the newsmonger and the messenger from parish to parish from the inland hills to the flats and pastures of the coast. And so the songs he sang were something more than a pastime; they spread no doubt a world of misinformation and credulity, but without them the peasant would have been perhaps more ignorant, and certainly more isolated than he was, and the history which later he helped to make might never have come to be history. What the songs were that were sung by the Little Merchant one can judge by such as remain, and they are many. It is true that the ballads which once treated of current news are now a little out of date, and by dint of long corruption are as misty and as mythical as the remotest legends; but one can imagine what they may have been by considering the Complaint which is today as popular as it can ever have been. It is a doleful ballad which recounts in the plainest language and in very great, and generally quite incorrect detail, some crime committed in the neighborhood. It generally follows a stereotyped course, the culprit being described in conventional terms that never change, and always being discovered and caught in the last verse but one. Nevertheless, it not only reaches peasants who, even in these days, never read or even see a newspaper, but it is vividly appreciated even by such as live within reach of towns, and lingers word for word in their minds through all its many verses, long after the whole affair has been forgotten by every one else, and, as often occurs, after succeeding events have proved the Complaint to be wholly wrong. Wherefore even today local news is best remembered when it is put into the old traditional form of rhymed verse. The ballads, which are still sung among the people, resemble their English kin, but with a difference; they have characteristics of their own. They are shorter in general than are most of our old ballads; they incline to the chanson; they are frequently set to a single rhyme all through, and the refrain, which with us is often absent and always subordinate, is sometimes nearly as long as the actual verse. Such an one as follows, which is still very popular, may be taken as fairly typical. THE PRISONER OF HOLLAND. Within my father's garden And it's oh, beside my sweetheart, It's oh, beside my sweetheart, How gladly would I be! The quail and the turtledove, They sing unto the maidens My heart has gone a-wandering, And it's oh, etc. And if I sought him, lady, And it's oh, etc. I'd give you a broad river And it's oh, beside my sweetheart, It is a noticeable fact that the more deeply one penetrates into the country, the more distinctly do the ballads divide into two classes, the melancholy, which are nearly always concerned with death, and the gay or comic, which are much too freespoken to bear translation. Such songs as are to be heard round Dinard, for instance, are infinitely more decent than those that are popular in the farms that border on the Hunaudaye forest, where there are ditties so Rabelaisian that one is grateful for the mixture of patois and old French that, though sometimes insufficiently, obscures their meaning. An occasion that here, as elsewhere, gives rise to many such songs, is a marriage; and a curious custom is that of the marriage-walk. On the day after the wedding, which for this rea son is generally on a Saturday, the bride and groom and all their company set out two and two, to walk either into the nearest large village or town, or if they already live in one, to traverse all its principal streets; in this latter case, the walk takes place in the evening. Two and two the couples follow each other; arm in arm, or hand in hand, dancing a curious running step with a long swing of the leg to alternate sides, and singing traditional songs that are known as marriageverses (couplets de noce); some of which are so old that they are little more than nonsense after centuries of mis-repetition. Every inn passed upon the walk must be entered and the bride's health drunk; and at every inn the bride must sing a song,-not such a simple matter as it sounds, as no marriage-walk worthy of the name will choose a route that passes less than six or eight drinking-houses. But however many songs the bride may be called upon to sing, the traditional couplets remain the same that they have always been through more years than one can hope to count. Another kind of song must be mentioned, as it is very characteristic; the Long Song (chanson-longue), which is something on the principle of the En'glish rhyme, "The House that Jack 'Built," save that as a rule when it has reached its greatest length of verse it gradually decreases again, and ends only when it has once more reached the beginning. This kind of song is essentially a pastime in the most literal sense of the word, and is generally sung to help over a time of labor or enforced idleness. There are Long Songs for the harvest, when the crimson buckwheat stubble is cut and tied and set up in interminable lines of small red stooks; there are others for the conscripts when they march in to the nearest centre to draw their num-bers; others again for the drinker with 'a verse for every inn he stops at, or for every mug of cider that he empties. Till recently, too, there were Long Songs for the maidens to sing as they 'span; but it is only the old women who nowadays, spin and the ancient VOL. XII. LIVING AGE. 580 rhymes are full of words that have become meaningless and obsolete, now that the old practices have died out and the very methods of treating the wool are almost forgotten. An example of a song may be given that is sung generally to children, with whom, in the remote byeways of the country, it is as well-beloved as our own "Red-Riding-Hood." Indeed, a mother sometimes quotes from it much as English mothers may quote, "The better to eat you with, my dear;" and the end, if more cheerful, is at least delightfully vague. "Maitre d'Aziliou” is very old, and people of the countryside are apt to declare that the king in it is the first king of Brittany, and the wood, the neighboring forest of La Hunaudaye, on the borders of which the ballad still lingers. MASTER D'AZILIOU. It was Master D'Aziliou WOO. A hundred leagues he took her away, And there was none to say him nay. When they came to the forest rim, "Give me to eat!" she begged of him. "If thou art hungry, eat thy head; For never more shalt thou eat bread." And when they came to the forest side, "Give me to drink!" again she cried. "If thou would'st drink, then drink thy pain; For never shalt thou drink again. "Here is a river wide and deep, And three ladies within it sleep; “And thou, my love, hast followed me, To add a fourth to the other three." "Oh, turn at least thy face," she said, "And look not on an uncloth'd maid." The lady, she caught him unaware, And into the river tossed him fair. "Now help me, help, my dear," he cried, "And thou to-morrow shalt be my bride." "Dive down, my master, dive down deep, And wed the ladies that yonder sleep." "How canst thou find thy father's town, If thou dost leave me here to drown?" "Thy little grey horse I'll surely ride, And he shall be my homeward guide." "And what will the King, thy father, say, Who saw thee ride with a lover away?" "He'll laugh with joy, that I have done to thee That which thou would'st have done to me." Formerly every trade had its distinctive song, but few of these are even dimly remembered. Only the Guild of Saint Joseph, the carpenters, cabinet-makers, and ship-builders, walk in company to mass every year as their patron's day comes round, bearing their ancient green banner and the great nosegays of flowers that, after a benediction at the altar, will be hung up at their doors; and singing as they have sung it, all these three hundred years that the guild has existed, their quaint canticle with its stamping refrain that mimics the sound of hammering. But once for every trade, as has been said, these songs existed; and now they are so nearly forgotten that only a stray one may be met with rarely, and as it were by accident; as in a little drinking-house of Saint Enogat was recently heard the Song of the Sawyers. It is a fine rollicking ditty, with an odd refrain made up of picturesque oaths, accompanied by drawing the moistened thumb-tip sharply down the door-panel, and thereby producing a loud vibrating noise that sufficiently recalls the whirring noise of the hand-saws. pity, indeed, that these trade-songs are so few, for, to judge by the rare examples that remain, they were curious and individual beyond most others; and with them have died a host of ancient customs. In nearly every trade the apprentice on becoming a journeyman had to sing his song, though one does not know whether this was the It is a trade-song or another of his choice; and the same was exacted from every member of the fraternity when he married. All this is gone; yet still the journeyman pays, when his apprenticeship is finished, a small fee which is called the song-penny; and still, when a workman marries, he treats some of his fellows to cider or absinthe, and calls it paying the song. The words linger, though the use is dead; and to-morrow, or next day, the grass will be green upon the graves and the very meaning will be forgotten. And these, with all the rest of the ancient songs, would have been forgotten long ago, but for the one thing that has saved them till now; the mothers who sing to their children have been the great guardians of traditional literature. It is they who have handed down the old ballads and rhymes, who have sung them as lullabies to the babies, and told them as stories to the elder ones, who in their turn will hand them on and on again; it is from mother to child that the legends have come to us across the ages, so strangely unchanged in all the changing years. The songs that die out are the songs the mother more seldom sings; and those that live are the ones that she loves best, and that the children about her love best. So "Master d'Aziliou" has come to us, while many a graver ballad is gone; and there are a hundred foolish rhymes with jingling refrainswhere not one of the season-plays, that were so popular about the country-side, is to be found complete. Traditional literature has come down to usthrough the children; it is worth while to be grateful for it, but one wishesthat they had not exercised so stern a right of selection. And very soon even they will turn their backs definitely on the old songs. that are out of date, and foolishly, hopelessly, shockingly ancient and! uninteresting to those that have outgrown them; and they will give up the simple-minded litanies and canticles, as their mothers are giving up their local caps and distinctive dresses; and there will be no music in High Brittany I S that does not come from the musichaus of Paris or London. The old songs, that have lived so many hundred years, will be utterly dead and done with; and granted that they are rude, uncouth, and unlovely, one remembers only that there is a charm that lingers about them always. They are the Songs of Yesterday, and to-morrow they will be forgotten. From The New Review. IN THE ASOLAN COUNTRY. Whether one approaches the Asolan Country from the mountains or from the sea, the roads to it are all delightful. They take one to a romantic landscape of green hills and blue mountains, a landscape with the charm of northern freshness, of southern radiance, of varied aspect. On one side the rockwalls of the near Alps rise in barren majesty above the chestnut woods of Crespano and of Possagno; on the other stretches the Venetian plain, its far horizon broken by the sharp Euganean peaks, blue, and faint in the distance. The plain itself is sea-like in color and spaciousness under the fusing effects of day and night; often it looks like tapestry, dim and harmonious, and even textured-still oftener brightly green in sunlight; it is populous, highly cultivated; it sparkles with towns, and towers, and villas, and hamlets. Three hundred feet above it, sheltered from northern winds, is Asolo, looking out over it east, south, and west; west to a noble range of mountains and wooded hills that fall in rhythmic lines to the level land. Bassano and Vicenza lie there, and there Castelfranco. They shine like jewels under the morning and evening sun. The domes of Padua are just discernible, and in a faint line against the sky, one sees a sign of Venice: it is St. Mark's tower! Anything for range of vision wider or more alluring and surprising would be hard to find even in Italy. Now and then the beauty and interest of this hill-town are written of, and the commonplaces of descriptive travel find seasonable expression and oblivion. They are revived from time to time because of the English poet who came here. Or the Asolan landscape is put before the public by the painter who loves it. If in casual hands the "article," Asolo, lack the personal note, and its intimate and profound and varied charm remain uncelebrated, its name, at least, is made to stir a remoter, if a fainter curiosity, even while it is left, like the usual Italian subject, alien to us. If, seeing much and loving nothing, one come to Asolo, the lover's part there lies untouched, and is rightly left for the poet and the painter. Sixty-one years ago, George Sand, first among the famous of our day to come to Asolo, walked here in man's blouse, and alone. She started from Bassano, and seems to have lost her way, purposely wandering into one of the gorges of the Grappa, where, not entirely released from the febrile excite. ment of her recent rupture with Musser, at Venice, she seemed for the time being, she tells us, in a solitude of the New World; and she half expected to see a boa uncoil his monstrous length, she half imagined the cry of a panther in the wild wind that rose and fell among the horrific rocks. One suspects her of Byronizing with her woe and with nature of walking into rocky gorges to find something in accord with her state of mind. Apparently she climbed to the first snows, and descended near Possagno, and then continued her less eccentric and proper way to Asolo in the early spring of 1834. She says nothing concerning Asolo itself, and but a few words of admiration for the country about it. She calls it an "earthly Paradise," the richest in Italy for its healthy climate and delicious fruits. The limpidity of its waters, the fertility of its soil, the force of its vegetation, the beauty of its race, and the magnificence of its views seem made, she says, expressly to nourish the highest faculties of the soul and excite the noblest ambition. Her book of travel gives a new note of interest to the land, which was for the moment but a background, |