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 Provencal 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 Alfonso answered 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.[1] He 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 Provencal, some in
French; many are interlarded with prose sentences, in which case
they are called "cansounetto eme parla." Formerly the same style of
composition bore the name of _cantefable_. 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 Provencal
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
Provencal patois, the abandonment of his old quarter costs a pang to
a child _deis 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 Marsio." 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 the authors 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 Feraud, whose address I hold
in my hands, will be happy to compose songs or romances for marriages,
baptisms, and other such events, either in Provencal 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 itinerant _bufo_ was 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 Provencal
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 Provencal 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 Provencal 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 the
modern world, or to galvanise the dry bones of mediaeval romance into a
dubious animation. These works are _Mireio_ and _Margarido_. 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 the _Wahrheit und Dichtung_ of the
life of the people whose songs we have to study.
Since there is record of them the Provencals 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 Provencal dance of the
_olivette_. 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 the _galooube_, 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 milder songs. 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 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 and _nouestro maire
Evo_ are 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 the Cross 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
Jesu 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 Provencal 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 Provencals 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'Officialite, and
Maitre 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. The
opposite 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 Provencals 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 my love ..." 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
the _armettes_: 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 the
_armettes_ will kiss them this night; if they are naughty, they will
scratch their little feet.
The Provencal 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 Christian aera, or in the
lately unearthed records of rabbinical tradition. Various of them
have regard to what is still, as M. Lentheric says, "one of the great
popular emotions of the South of France"--the reputed presence there
of Mary Magdalene. M. Lentheric 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 of the 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 grand _fete_
indeed, 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 the workshop! 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 Provencal 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.
Clemenceau 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 progre," 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.
Provencal folk-songs have but few analogies with the literature which
heedlessly, though beyond recall, has been named Provencal. 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 Provencal marriages
are the result of an elopement. The expedient never fails; Provencal
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 his part in the
comedy was purely passive. In less than twenty years the same drama
is enacted with Margarido, the daughter, in the _role_ of Mario the
mother.
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 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 ode [Greek: k' eus koren]. 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 Graecia, lend nevertheless to Provencal 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 Phocaea, in Asia Minor, and
put into a small creek on the Provencal 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 Provencal 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 the _Elysii Campi_ of 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. The legend 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 saw _ove '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 dead [Greek:
euploi].
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 with the women of Arles. As a rule, the
Provencal 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.
Lentheric 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 called [Greek: keratisis], 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 no more 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 in _emeutes_ the proverbial _quattordici rebellioni_ of "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 our _Cannebiere_." 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 Abbe Papon, who attributed
to the same source the peculiar prosody and intonation of the
street cries of Marseilles. The Provencal 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:
Fisher, fishing in the sea,
Fish my mistress up for me.
Fish her up before she drowns,
Thou shalt have four hundred crowns.
Fish her for me dead and cold,
Thou shalt have my all in gold.
The romantic ballads of Provence are of an importance which demands,
properly speaking, a separate study. Provence was, beyond a doubt,
one of the main sources of the ballad literature of France, Spain, and
Italy. That certain still existing Provencal ballads passed over into
Piedmont as early as the thirteenth century is the opinion of Count
Nigra, the Italian diplomatist, not the least of whose distinguished
services to his country has been the support he was one of the first
to give to the cause of popular research. In all these songs the
plot goes for everything, the poetry for little or nothing; I shall
therefore best economise my space by giving a rough outline of the
stories of two or three of them. "Fluranco" is a characteristic
specimen. Fluranco, "la flour d'aquest pays," was married when she was
a little thing, and her husband at once went away to the wars. Monday
they were wed, Tuesday he was gone. At the end of seven years the
knight comes back, knocks at the door, and asks for Fluranco. His
mother says that she is no longer here; they sent her to fetch water,
and the Moors, the Saracen Moors, carried her off. "Where did they
take her to?" "They took her a hundred leagues away." The knight makes
a ship of gold and silver; he sails and sails without seeing aught but
the washer-women washing fine linen. At last he asks of them: "Tell
me whose tower is that, and to whom that castle belongs." "It is the
castle of the Saracen Moor." "How can I get into it?" "Dress yourself
as a poor pilgrim, and ask alms in Christ's name." In this way he
gains admittance, and Fluranco (she it is) bids the servant set the
table for the "poor pilgrim." When the knight is seated at table,
Fluranco begins to laugh. "What are you laughing at, Madamo?" She
confesses that she knows who he is. They collect a quantity of fine
gold; then they go the stable, and she mounts the russet horse and he
mounts the grey. Just as they are crossing the bridge the Moor sees
them. "Seven years," he cries, "I have clothed thee in fine damask,
seven years I have given thee morocco shoes, seven years I have laid
thee in fine linen, seven years I have kept thee--for one of my sons!"
The carelessness or cruelty of a stepmother (the head-wife of Asiatic
tales) is a prolific central idea in Provencal romance. While the
husband was engaged in distant adventures--tournaments, feudal wars,
or crusading expeditions--the wife, who was often little more than a
child, remained at the mercy of the occasionally unamiable dowager who
ruled the masterless _chateau_. The case of cruelty is exemplified
in the story of Guilhem de Beauvoire, who has to leave his child-wife
five weeks after marriage. "I counsel you, mother," he says as he sets
out, "to put her to do no kind of work: neither to fetch water, nor
to spin, nor yet to knead bread. Send her to mass, and give her good
dinners, and let her go out walking with other ladies." At the end of
five weeks the mother put the young wife to keep swine. The swine girl
went up to the mountain top and sang and sang. Guilhem de Beauvoire,
who was beyond the sea, said to his page, "Does it not seem as though
my wife were singing?" He travels at all speed over mountain and sea
till he comes to his home, where no man knows him. On the way he meets
the swine girl, and from her he hears that she has to eat only that
which is rejected of the swine. At the house he is welcomed as an
honoured guest; supper is laid for him, and he asks that the swine
girl whom he has seen may come and sup with him. When she sits down
beside him the swine girl bursts into tears. "Why do you weep, swine
girl?" "For seven years I have not supped at table!" Then in the
bitterness of yet another outrage to which the vile woman subjects
her, she cries aloud, "Oh! Guilhem de Beauvoire, who art beyond
the sea, God help thee! Verily thy cruel mother has abandoned me!"
Secretly Guilhem tells her who he is, and in proof of it shows her the
ring she gave him. In the morning the mother calls the swine girl to
go after her pigs. "If you were not my mother," says Guilhem, "I would
have you hung; as you are my mother, I will wall you up between two
walls."
The antiquity of the ballads of _Fluranco_ and _Guilhem de Beauvoire_
is shown by the fact that they plainly belong to a time when such work
as fetching water or making bread was regarded as amongst the likely
employments of noble ladies--though, from excess of indulgence,
Guilhem did not wish his wife to be set even to these light tasks. A
ballad, probably of about the same date, treats the case of a man who,
through the weakness which is the cause of half the crimes, becomes
the agent of his mother's guilt. The tragedy is unfolded with almost
the sublime laconicism of the _Divina Commedia_. Francoiso was married
when she was so young that she did not know how to do the service, and
the cruel mother was always saying to her son that Francoiso must die.
One day, after the young wife had laid the table, and had set thereon
the wine and the bread, and the fresh water, her husband said to her,
"My Francoiso, is there not anyone, no friend, who shall protect thy
life?" "I have my mother and my father, and you, who are my husband,
very well will you protect my life." Then, as they sit at meat, he
takes a knife and kills her; and he lifts her in his arms and kisses
her, and lays her under the flower of the jessamine, and he goes to
his mother and says, "My mother, your greatest wish is fulfilled: I
have killed Francoiso."
The genuine Provencal does not shrink from violence. Old inhabitants
still tell tales of the savage brigandage of the Esterel, of the
horrors of the _Terreur blanche_. Mild manners and social amenities
have never been characteristic of fair Provence. Even now the peasant
cannot disentangle his thoughts without a volley of oaths--harmless
indeed, for the most part (except those which are borrowed from
the _franciots_), but in sound terrific. Yet if it be true that the
character of a nation is asserted in its songs, it must be owned that
the songs of Provence speak favourably for the Provencal people. They
say that they are a people who have a steady and abiding sympathy
with honest men and virtuous women. They say further that rough and
ruthless though they may be when their blood is stirred, yet have they
a pitiful heart. The Provencal singer is slow to utterly condemn;
he grasps the saving inconsistencies of human nature; he makes the
murderer lay his victim "souto lou flour dou jaussemin:" under the
white jessamine flower, cherished beyond all flowers in Provence,
which has a strange passion for white things--white horses, white
dogs, white sheep, white doves, and the fair white hand of woman. Many
songs deal directly with almsgivings, the ritual of pity. To no part
of the Bible is there more frequent reference than to the parable of
the rich man and Lazarus; no neocatholic legend has been more gladly
accepted than the story in which some tattered beggar proves to
be Christ--a story, by the by, that holds in it the essence of the
Christian faith. If a Greek saw a beautiful unknown youth playing his
pipe beside some babbling stream, he believed him to be a god; the
Christian of the early ages recognised Christ in each mendicant
in loathsome rags, in each leper succoured at the risk of mortal
infection.
The Provencal tongue is not a mixture (as is too often said) of
Italian and French; nor is physical Provence a less fair Italy or a
fairer France. A land wildly convulsed in its storms, mysteriously
breathless in its calms; a garden here, a desert there; a land of
translucent inlets and red porphyry hills; before all, a land of the
illimitable grey of olive and limestone--this is Provence. Anyone
finding himself of a sudden where the Provencal olives raise their
dwarf heads with a weary look of eternity to the rainless heaven,
would say that the dominant feature in the landscape was its exceeding
seriousness. Sometimes on the coast the prevailing note changes from
grey to blue; the blanched rocks catch the colour of the sea, and not
the sky only, but dry fine air close around seems of a blueness so
intense as to make the senses swim. Better suited to a Nature thus
made up of crude discords and subtle harmonies is the old Provencal
speech, howsoever corrupt, than the exquisite French of Parisian
_salons_. But the language goes and the songs go too. Damase Arbaud
relates how, when he went on a long journey to speak with a man
reported to have cognisance of much traditional matter, he met,
issuing from the house door, not the man, but his coffin. The fact
is typical; the old order of things passes away: _nouastei diou se'n
van_.
[Footnote 1: I am told that the peasants of the country round
Moscow have a natural gift for imitating birds, and that they
intersperse the singing of their own sad songs with this sweet
carolling.]