Il y a un' fille,

La plus bell' des filles.
La fill' sur la plume,
La plum' sur l' oiseau,
L'oiseau dedans l'œuf,
L'œuf dedans le nid,
Le nid sur la branche,
La branche sur l'arbre,
L'arbre dans le bois.
Oh! oh! oh! le bois,

Le plus joli de tous les bois!

The real working songs, words, music, action, all part of the work, were not always or by any means exclusively used by the workers. A collection called "La Caribarye des Artisans," published in the time of Louis XIV., contained every kind of song but chansons de métiers. The rhythm of many of these, no doubt, helped the work to go on, and that the words were light, amusing, or warlike, mattered little to the workman. The lighter the better, in fact, according to the story which M. Champfleury tells of a locksmith who was reproached by his cure for sing. ing profane songs. When he sang Psalms, he said, his tools went to sleep

In one of the oldest of these, a Breton song, M. de Villemarqué found traces of Druid worship. Then the words, néné, nono, nenna, som-som, to be found in the lullabies of all the southern provinces, and of Auvergne, are claimed by antiquaries" au leiu qu'en fredonnant ces couplets as pagan invocations to sleep.

Néné, petite;

Sainte Marguerite,

Endormez-moi mon enfant,

Jusqu'à l'âge de quinze ans.

In fact, the berceuses, simple as they seem, may very likely have a longer pedigree than any other kind of popular song. Sleep is as old as love or death, older than dancing or story-telling, though perhaps not older than the daily work which must first have made it precious. Here, too, song comes in, to lighten labor and help

tired limbs.

"Le rythme est une force," says M. Tiersot at the beginning of his chapter on the chansons de métiers. As a general rule, these songs of trade and labor are songs of action, strongly marked in time and tune. The exceptions are the songs of trade companies and corporations, which have nothing to do with the work itself, but are sung to its glory, and such old travelling songs as that to which the 'prentices used to make the tour of France:

Partons, chers compagnons,
Le devoir nous l'ordonne.

In old times, no doubt, every corporation
had its own song. They are almost ex-
tinct, and do not even linger on in popular
tradition. Possibly the reason is that
trade, more than daily labor, much more
than the daily round of life, has changed
its character; besides that these songs
never can have been popular in the sense
of many others we have studied. Some
of the most curious among the chansons
de métiers are the Cries of Paris, which
from the earliest times were musical, and
may well be called popular, belonging en-
tirely to the people, and handed down
among them. But they are a study in
themselves, into which we will not enter
even so far as M. Tiersot does.

"The

si gais-jugez-en vous même -
lace-makers of Flanders, to this day,
count their stitches and pins by some mo-
notonous old song, which has nothing to
do with lace-making; and there are certain
songs, all over France, which tradition has
consecrated to be sung at certain work,
without any real connection between the
work and the song. Some of the mauma.
riées are used in this way. One, "Le
Petit Mari," with a long refrain, is sung
by the women of La Bresse to their spin-
ning-wheels. This song is nothing more

nor less than "I had a little husband no

bigger than my thumb." The refrain,

Je cous, je teille, je coupe du fil, etc. seems to have grown to it in the course of centuries.

Normandy has special songs for fruitgathering and harvest; the mulberry-trees of the Cévennes have a slow chant of their own; in Provence the young girls sing révéyés, to call each other to the gathering of olives or grapes. But one vintage song, "Plantons la vigne," is traditional in almost all the vine-bearing provinces of France. Only the vignerons of the Berry have chosen to replace it with a song of their own, much less appropriate, being one more version of the maumariée, with a special refrain.

True old pastorals, slow and dreamy, are sung by the shepherds on the mountains. In Poitou they have what is called a huchage, a sort of monotonous, halfmeaningless cry, without melody or even cadence, used by the shepherdesses to call their dogs or their sheep. It raises a vis. ion of a little old shepherdess, her distaff in her hand, her scanty grey locks covered with a close white cap, her short petticoat showing bare legs and bare feet in sabots, her shrewd face brown and thin with long exposure. She cries in her patois aux

bêtes; such a song as this might have been | known and much used in France, as now made for her.

Thus we come gradually nearer to the most real and most striking of the songs of labor-what the peasants call chansons à grand vent — such as are sung to the oxen as they plough. These songs, of course, as modern farming advances, are dying out and disappearing every day. Soon, with all their picturesque sadness, love of the soil mixed with bitter complaint, fineness of melody, supposed sacredness of origin, traditional prideevery good laborer must be able to sing to his oxen, and thus to drive them better than with a goad-soon these songs, their refrains full of old names of oxen,

Arondâ, Virondâ,
Charbonné, Maréchaô,
Motet et Roget,
Mortagne et Chollet,

will be only found in collections, or in the
wonderful descriptions of a writer like
George Sand.

in some less civilized countries, but dying
out, as horses and steam are more used on
the rivers. "La Maumariée," with a new
refrain, again appears as a special miller's
song:

Pilons, pilons, pilons l'orge,
Pilons l'orge, pilons-la,
Mon père m'y maria;
Pilons l'orge, pilons-la;
A ung villain m'y donna.

Marching songs, of course, are very old, and likely to live. So also, one would think, are the songs of sailors and seamen, full of both poetical and rhythmical interest and beauty. Some of the best of these belong to Brittany, and among them M. Tiersot especially mentions "la Légende de Saint Azénor," and "les Trois Marins de Groix." Songs of the form of the Italian barcarole are also to be found on the French coast, especially in the south; and here the melancholy beauty of more northern sea-songs is replaced by gaiety, spirit, and swing.

Turning from sailors to soldiers, we find ourselves in face of a new great cycle of song, and to sketch even its broadest features in a few words is almost too difficult an undertaking. But in truth the war-songs of the Gauls were the earliest beginning of the popular songs of France. The oldest known of this character is the "Sword-Dance of Brittany." Its authenA longer life, perhaps, lies before that ticity is not quite certain, but some au cycle of working songs whose cadence is thorities trace it back to the sixth century, actually a motive power, so that swing of and both words and melody are a striking song and movement of body belong to example of a battle-song. But we have each other, and hardly exist apart. Such not here so much to do with chants de songs as these are among the most ancient bataille which generally, as we have of all. The boatmen and water-carriers seen, in becoming epic, ceased to be popof old Egypt, the corn-grinders of Greece, ular as with songs composed by soldiers sang these measured songs at their work. themselves, and belonging to their daily Music is perhaps the secret of many won-life, their adventures, their good or bad derful engineering feats of the old world. Now, in the threshing of corn in La Vendée, the flail falls to a musical refrain:

Ho! batteux, battons la gerbe, Compagnons, joyeusement! Washerwomen, especially in the south, sing as they beat the linen on the stones; the Flemish weaver has his song, scarcely to be distinguished from the noise of his loom, so one helps the other:

Et tipe tape et tipe tape,
Est-il trop gros, est-il trop fin,

Et couchés tard, levés matin, Iroun lan la.
En roulant la navette,
Le beau temps viendra.
There are also the towing or hauling
songs, "a pull all together," anciently well

fortunes. The first singers of most of these were the adventurers of the Middle Ages, the free-lances, whose wild life breaks out in them. If they sang of their battles it was generally to some old air, which is sometimes to be found with

strangely different words and refrain, set to some peaceful song of the provinces. Many curious military traditions are preserved in these songs made by the soldiers themselves; the best collection of them, it seems, is M. Leroux de Lincy's "Recueil des Chants Historiques Français." As the centuries pass on the tone becomes more easy, more good-humored; the music is as much country-dance as march. Till the Revolution, when the “Marseillaise," of course, drove everything else

sake of the songs connected with it. Even M. Tiersot's long and interesting chapter only seems to touch the edge of such a subject as this. Its roots are in heathen and in Celtic times; and even in the

out of the field, French soldiers went to their campaigns singing to the tune of "La Mère Michel a perdu son chat." After the Revolution, which certainly, whatever it may have done for France, has not added to her outward joy, a plain- | Christian Middle Ages the Church did tive tone comes in with the songs of the conscripts. A few of them, but difficult to find, date back to the levées of 1793; most of them are traceable to the First Empire, and are still popular in the provinces.

Ils étiont faiseux de bas;

Et à c't'heure ils sont soldats.

M. Tiersot finds in them a "ton mélangé
de mélancolie pastorale et de gouaillerie
soldatesque." This same gouaillerie or
humeur gauloise, exists plentifully to this
day in the marching songs of the French
army, made, it seems, on every subject
under the sun. In many regiments now,
however, silence while marching is com-
pulsory, and in this way it is likely that a
whole series of popular songs will die out
and be forgotten. Perhaps it is only col-
lectors of curiosities who will very much
miss such a song as this, especially as its
spirited air may find other words:

Ma capote a trois boutons - Marchons!
Ma capote a trois boutons Marchons!

Marchons légèr', légère, bis.
Marchons légèrement.

So they go on till they count one hundred
and three buttons.

The study of bugle-calls, of drums, of all the onomatopées which represent the sound of instruments, such as Pata-pata pan, Ran tan plan, Tarare pon pon, Trudon trudaine, cannot possibly occupy us

now.

It is not perhaps of much interest, even to folk-lorists, and it can hardly even

not by any means entirely possess herself
of this older world of peasant festival,
ruled by a mysterious nature. She could
only condemn many of its practices as
diabolical and the work of sorcerers.
This is the world where, in every country,
one finds such survivals as belief in the
virtue of plants, the symbolism of flowers;
here comes in the old nature-worship in
honor paid to wells and springs, in fires
on high hills, and all the strange observ-
ances among which students of folk-lore
find their greatest treasures. All these
popular festivals had their dances, and in
consequence their songs, beginning with
"Aguilaneuf," the feast of the winter sol-
stice, when a band of quêteurs goes round
to this day singing:

Donnez-moi mes aguignettes
Aguignola.

Songs and names vary in the different
provinces, and religion is mixed up even
with the fêtes that have no special reli-
gious meaning. May-day is one of the
oldest of these. Long before it held its
present place as "le premier jour du mois
de Marie," it was the festival of youth,
and the Queen of May was dressed in
white and crowned with flowers. Her old
popular name in the eastern provinces,
la Trimousette, has never yet found an
explanation. Her song, with many varia-
tions, appears to be as old as her name:
C'est le Mai, mois de Mai,
C'est le joli mois de Mai.

En revenant de dans les champs
Nous ont trouvé les blés si grands,
La blanche épine florissant,
Devant Dieu.

be called part of the greater study of la In its present form, this song is Christian : chanson populaire. From this point of view one also feels justified in neglecting the cycle of drinking-songs, which are not, as a rule, old popular songs, but sometimes the work of poets such as Basselin or Le Houx, sometimes a set of words of But there are traces in it, as in the modern little value and no interest, set to any well-"Aguilaneuf," of another language and a known air. No songs of this kind, and strangely few allusions to the subject, have been handed down by oral tradition among the peasants. Neither can we do more than mention the vaudevilles, town or street songs, which have nothing to do with the peasants, and might well demand an article of their own.

The subject of fêtes, thoroughly popular, and with the dignity of longest descent, is one that should be studied in all its history and customs, not merely for the

pre-existing type. It is the same with songs belonging to the great old fête of Saint Jean, the most ancient celebration of the summer solstice, clearly traceable, especially in Brittany, to Druid ceremonies. Its most popular song, "Voici la Saint Jean, l'heureuse journée," is a ronde danced round the sacred bonfire on the eve of the saint's day.

Here we may mention the noëls, so large and interesting a series that M. Tiersot gives them a chapter to themselves. Quite

and in other provinces, this song takes
the form of a chant or recitative, shrill,
and made up of irregular exclamations.
Qu'etz mort!

Que tourneratz pas jamès!
Jamès! Jamès!

as popular though not so ancient as the songs belonging to other fêtes of the year, they differ from them in character by being entirely religious and Catholic in intention. The older festivals only took the names of saints to sanctify the old natureworship to which they belonged. The noëls always belonged to Christmas, and In some mountain districts, Hautes-Alpes to its varying ceremonies, still to be met and Pyrenees, the funeral songs are of a with here and there in France. Whole more lyrical character. books of these old noëls, carols, as we call France has never been without her rethem, are preserved; but it must be con-ligious songs and prayers set to music. fessed that even in them the religious When the Latin language was no longer character is not wholly maintained. They understood, peasant faith and devotion are set to all sorts of lively and profane melodies, and in tune, at least, can hardly be distinguished from dances, love-songs, drinking-songs. Even the words are often of a startling quaintness which borders on real irreverence, and the Christmas story sung with such refrains as "tour. lourirette... lonlanderirette," suggests curious reflections. The whole subject of noëls and of old Christmas ceremonies repays any amount of study, and lets in strange lights on the French character. We must not, however, think that the popular song of France is entirely without earnestness and true religious feeling.

To return to more ordinary fête-songs it is easy to imagine that a singing nation would have its songs belonging to the great events of human life; and of these fêtes de la vie, in the course of a peasant's toiling existence, the greatest evidently is marriage. It may be generally is generally is the entrance for both on a still more grinding round of toil; still, at the time, it means rejoicing; and it has a whole series of songs of its own, often in dialogue, sometimes light and profane in tone, but more generally, we are assured, of an almost religious gravity. Brittany, Berry, and the west are richest in the chanson de noces; in the south and east it is more ordinary. One of the most popular specimens is the song, universally known, of the young girls, the bride's former companions:

Vous n'irez plus au bal,
Madam' la marriée.

Tradition says that this was sung to Anne
of Bretagne when she was married at
Nantes to Louis XII., in the year 1499.
Death also has its songs, or rather, its
musical cries and lamentations. There is
a piercing sadness in the cris d'enterre-
ment to be heard in various provinces.
M. Tiersot gives a specimen from Gas-
cony, too long to be quoted here; it is full
of grief and tenderness, the lament for a
father loved and obeyed by all. Here,

invented such formulas as that known_by the name of the White Paternoster. For a real and most interesting study of this prayer, of which we here find three versions - Picardy, Bresse, and Gasconywe may refer to the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco's delightful and helpful book "On the Study of Folk-Songs." Rhythm has always been found to help memory, and it was by means of verse and music, even in Druid times, that the people learned the dogmas of their religion. Such ancient instructions, partly turned to the service of Christianity, are still known and repeated among the Bretons. They, too, have preserved the beautiful old cantiques which hold their place as the finest religious poetry of France; not sung in the churches, but by a thousand voices in the open air, at pardons or church festivals, with no accompaniment but "les bruits de la mer ou la vent qui souffle à travers les landes."

There is hardly space left for any mention of Huguenot songs and psalms, which, however popular as they became in some parts of France, cannot take their place as specimens of the real old chanson populaire. It is curious to note that in early days these psalms of Marot and De Béza were sung to profane and familiar tunes, but that later they came to possess very fine and striking melodies of their own. The former state of things would hardly have gained Calvin's approval. "Quand la mélodie est avec," he said, "cela transperce beaucoup plus fort le cœur." This, no doubt, is true in a wider sense than he meant it.

We cannot here follow M. Tiersot through his study of the chants nationaux of France, among which he counts "Vive Henri IV.," "Ca ira," the "Carmagnole," and, last and greatest, the "Marseillaise." That world-famed song, the feeling of a people breaking its way through one man into words and music, is a typical example of a chant populaire.