"THE BLENDING"--of alternate prose and verse--"is not unknown in various
countries." Thus in Dr. Steere's _Swahili Tales_ (London, 1870), p. vii.
we read: "It is a constant characteristic of popular native tales to have
a sort of burden, which all join in singing. Frequently the skeleton of
the story seems to be contained in these snatches of singing, which the
story-teller connects by an extemporized account of the intervening
history . . . Almost all these stories had sung parts, and of some of
these, even those who sung them could scarcely explain the meaning . . .
I have heard stories partly told, in which the verse parts were in the
Yao and Nyamwezi languages." The examples given (_Sultan Majnun_) are
only verses supposed to be chanted by the characters in the tale. It is
improbable that the Yaos and Nyamwezis borrowed the custom of inserting
verse into prose tales from Arab literature, where the intercalated verse
is usually of a moral and reflective character.
Mr. Jamieson, in _Illustrations of Northern Antiquities_ (p. 379),
preserved a _cante-fable_ called _Rosmer Halfman_, or _The Merman
Rosmer_. Mr. Motherwell remarks (_Minstrelsy_, Glasgow, 1827, p. xv.):
"Thus I have heard the ancient ballad of _Young Beichan and Susy Pye_
dilated by a story-teller into a tale of remarkable dimensions--a
paragraph of prose and then a _screed_ of rhyme alternately given." The
example published by Mr. Motherwell gives us the very form _of Aucassin
and Nicolete_, surviving in Scotch folk lore:-
"Well ye must know that in the Moor's Castle, there was a mafsymore,
which is a dark deep dungeon for keeping prisoners. It was twenty feet
below the ground, and into this hole they closed poor Beichan. There he
stood, night and day, up to his waist in puddle-water; but night or day
it was all one to him, for no ae styme of light ever got in. So he lay
there a lang and weary while, and thinking on his heavy weird, he made a
murnfu' sang to pass the time--and this was the sang that he made, and
grat when he sang it, for he never thought of escaping from the
mafsymore, or of seeing his ain countrie again:
"My hounds they all run masterless,
My hawks they flee from tree to tree;
My youngest brother will heir my lands,
And fair England again I'll never see.
"O were I free as I hae been,
And my ship swimming once more on sea,
I'd turn my face to fair England,
And sail no more to a strange countrie."
"Now the cruel Moor had a beautiful daughter called Susy Pye, who was
accustomed to take a walk every morning in her garden, and as she was
walking ae day she heard the sough o' Beichan's sang, coming as it were
from below the ground."
All this is clearly analogous in form no less than in matter to our
_cante-fable_. Mr. Motherwell speaks of _fabliaux_, intended partly for
recitation, and partly for being sung; but does not refer by name to
_Aucassin and Nicolete_. If we may judge by analogy, then, the form of
the _cante-fable_ is probably an early artistic adaptation of a popular
narrative method.
STOUR; an ungainly word enough, familiar in Scotch with the sense of wind-
driven dust, it may be dust of battle. The French is _Estor_.
BIAUCAIRE, opposite Tarascon, also celebrated for its local hero, the
deathless Tartarin. There is a great deal of learning about Biaucaire;
probably the author of the _cante-fable_ never saw the place, but he need
not have thought it was on the sea-shore, as (p. 39) he seems to do.
There he makes the people of Beaucaire set out to wreck a ship. Ships do
not go up the Rhone, and get wrecked there, after escaping the perils of
the deep.
On p. 42, the poet clearly thinks that Nicolete, after landing from her
barque, had to travel a considerable distance before reaching Biaucaire.
The fact is that the poet is perfectly reckless of geography, like him
who wrote of the set-shore of Bohemia.
PAINTED WONDROUSLY. No one knows what is really meant by a _miramie_.
PLENTIFUL LACK OF COMFORT: rather freely for _Mout i aries peu conquis_.