This
opinion is as alive to-day in Lower Brittany as in the Middle Ages;
and we have seen celebrated there the same funeral ceremonies as
those of olden times.
opinion is as alive to-day in Lower Brittany as in the Middle Ages;
and we have seen celebrated there the same funeral ceremonies as
those of olden times.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v26 - Tur to Wat
O great king!
- O fire! O fire! etc.
## p. 15383 (#331) ##########################################
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
15383
May the rainbow shine on thy forehead! may the rainbow shine!
O fire! O fire! O steel! O steel! O fire! O fire! O
steel and fire! O oak! O oak! O earth! O earth!
O waves! O waves! O earth! O earth and oak!
NOTE
It is probable that the expedition to which this wild song alludes
took place on the territory of the Nantais; for their wine is white,
as is that of which the bard speaks. The different beverages he
attributes to the Bretons - mulberry wine, beer, hydromel, apple wine
or cider are also those which were used in the sixth century.
Without any doubt we have here. two distinct songs, welded to-
gether by the power of time. The second begins at the thirteenth
stanza, and is a warrior's hymn in honor of the sun, a fragment of
the Sword Round of the ancient Bretons.
Like the Gaels and the
Germans, they were in the habit of surrendering themselves to it
during their festivals; it was executed by young men who knew the
art of jumping circularly to music, at the same time throwing their
swords into the air and catching them again. This is represented on
three Celtic medallions in M. Hucher's collection: on one a warrior
jumps up and down, while brandishing his battle-axe in one hand,
and with the other throwing it up behind his long floating head-
dress; on a second one, a warrior dances before a suspended sword,
and, says M. Henri Martin, he is evidently repeating the invocation :-
“O sword, O great chief of the battle-field! O sword, O great
king!
This, it is obvious, would cast us back into plain paganism. At
least it is certain that the language of the last seven stanzas is still
older than that of the other twelve. As for its form, the entire piece
is regularly alliterated from one end to the other, like the songs
of the primitive bards; and like them, is subject to the law of ter-
nary rhythm. I have no need to draw notice to what a clashing of
meeting weapons it recalls to the ear, and what a strident blast the
melody breathes.
THE TRIBUTE OF NOMÉNOË-CORNOUAILLE DIALECT
ARGUMENT
NOMÉNOË, the greatest king whom Brittany has had, pursued the
work of his country's deliverance, but by means different from his
predecessors'. He opposed ruse to force; he feigned to submit to the
foreign domination, and by these tactics succeeded in impeding an
## p. 15384 (#332) ##########################################
15384
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
enemy ten times superior in numbers. The emperor Charles, called
the Bald, was deceived by his demonstrations of obedience. He did
not guess that the Breton chief, like all politicians of superior genius,
knew how to wait. When the moment for acting came, Noménoë
threw off the mask: he drove the Franks beyond the rivers of the
Oust and of Vilaine, extending the frontiers of Brittany to Poitou;
and taking the towns of Nantes and Rennes from the enemy, which
since then have not ceased to make part of the Breton territory,
he delivered his compatriots from the tribute which they paid the
Franks (841).
“A remarkably beautiful piece of poetry,” says Augustin Thierry,
«and one full of details of the habits of a very ancient epoch,
recounts the event which determined this grand act of independence. ”
According to the illustrious French historian, “it is an energetically
symbolic picture of the prolonged inaction of the patriot prince,
and of his rude awakening when he judged the moment had come. ”
( Ten Years of Historical Studies,' 6th ed. , page 515. )
I
The golden grass is mown; it has misted suddenly.
To battle!
It mists, – said, from the summit of the mountain of Arez, the great
chief of the family:
To battle!
From the direction of the country of the Franks, for three weeks
more and more, more and more, has it misted,
So that in no wise can I see my son return to me.
Good merchant, who the country travels o'er, know'st thou news of
Karo, my son ? --
Mayhap, old father of Arez; but how looks he? what does he ? -
He is a man of sense and of heart; he it was who went to drive the
chariots to Rennes,
To drive to Rennes the chariots drawn by horses harnessed three by
three,
Divided between them, they that carry faithfully Brittany's tribute. -
If your son is the tribute-bearer, in vain will you await him.
When they came to weigh the silver, there lacked three pounds in
every hundred;
And the steward said: Thy head, vassal, shall complete the weight.
And drawing his sword, he cut off the head of your son.
Then by the hair he took it, and threw it on the scales. -
## p. 15385 (#333) ##########################################
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
15385
At these words the old chief of the family was like to swoon:
Violently on the rock he fell, hiding his face with his white hairs;
And his head in his hands, he cried with a moan: Karo, my son,
my poor, dear son!
II
Followed by his kindred, the great tribal chief set out;
The great tribal chief of the family approaches, he approaches the
stronghold of Noménoë. -
Tell me, head of the porters, — the master, is he at home?
Be he there, or not there, God keep him in good health! -
As these words he said, the lord to his dwelling returned ;
Returning from the hunt, preceded by his great playful dogs,
In his hand he held his bow, on his shoulder carried a boar,
And the fresh blood, quite warm from the mouth of the beast, flowed
upon his white hand.
Good day, good day to you, honest mountaineers! first of all to you,
great tribal chief:
What news is there, what wish you of me?
We come to know of you if a law there be; if in the sky there is a
God, and in Brittany a chief. —
In the sky there is a God, I believe, and in Brittany a chief if I
can.
He who will, he can; he who can, drives the Frank away
Drives away the Frank, defends his country, avenges it and will
avenge it.
He will avenge the living and dead, and me and Karo my child,
My poor son Karo, beheaded by the excommunicated Frank;
Beheaded in his prime, and whose head, golden as millet, was thrown
into the scales to balance the weight! -
beard.
And the old man began to weep, and his tears flowed down his gray
And they shone as the dew on a lily, at the rising of the sun.
When the lord saw this, a bloody and terrible oath he swore:
By this boar's head and the arrow which pierced it, I swear it:
Before I wash the blood from my right hand, I shall have washed my
country's wound!
INI
Noménoë has done that which no chief e'er did before:
He went to the shores of the sea with bags to gather pebbles,
Pebbles to tender as tribute to the steward of the bald king. *
Noménoë has done that which chief ne'er did before:
With polished silver has he shod his horses, and with reversed shoes.
* The Emperor Charles, surnamed the Bald.
## p. 15386 (#334) ##########################################
15386
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
:
Noménoë has done that which chief ne'er did before:
Prince as he is, in person to pay the tribute he has gone. —
Open wide the gates of Rennes, that I make entry in the town:
With chariots full of silver, 'tis Noménoë who is here. -
Alight, my lord; enter the castle; and leave your chariots in the
coach-house;
Leave to the equerry your white horse, and come and sup above.
Come to sup, and first of all to wash: there sounds the water-horn;
do you hear ? * -
I will wash in a moment, my lord, when the tribute shall have been
weighed. -
The first bag to be carried (and it was well tied),
The first bag which was brought, of the right weight was found.
The second bag which was brought, also of right weight was found.
The third bag that they weighed:- Aha! aha! this weight is not
right!
When the steward this saw, unto the bag his hand he extended;
Quickly he seized the cords, endeavoring to untie them. -
Wait, wait, Sir Steward, with my sword I will cut them. -
Hardly had he finished these words, that his sword leaped from the
scabbard,
That close to the shoulders the head of the Frank bent double it
struck,
And that it cut flesh and nerves and one chain of the scale beside.
The head fell in the scale, and thus the balance was made.
But behold the town in uproar :- Stop, stop the assassin!
He escapes, he escapes! bring torches! let us run quickly after him. -
Bring torches! 'twould be well: the night is black, and frozen the
road;
But I greatly fear you will wear out your shoes in following me,
Your shoes of blue gilded leather: as to your scales, you will use
them no more ;
You will use no more your golden scales in weighing the stones of
the Bretons.
- To battle! -
NOTE
.
This traditional portrait of the chief whose political genius saved
Breton independence is no less faithful, from its point of view, than
those of history itself. Thus, Augustin Thierry did not hesitate to
place it in the gallery which contemporaneous history has preserved
to us, and which he has so admirably restored.
The latter proves
* Before the repast, at the sound of the horn, one washed one's hands.
## p. 15387 (#335) ##########################################
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
15387
by its general spirit, if by no precise feature, the exactitude of the
anecdote. Before the time of Noménoë, for at least ten years, the
Bretons had paid tribute to the Franks; he delivered them from it:
that is the real fact. The tone of the ballad is in harmony with the
epoch.
As the head of the Frank charged to receive the tribute falls in
the scales, where the weight is lacking, and the poet cries with fero-
cious joy, “His head fell in the scale, and thus the balance was
made! ” one remembers that a few years ago, Morvan, the Lez-Breiz
of the Breton tradition, d, trembling with rage, “If I could see him,
he would have of me what he asks, this king of the Franks: I would
pay him the tribute in iron. ”
In regard to the epic song with which the liberator of Brittany
inspired the national Muse, the satirical song composed in the Abbey
of St. Florent against Noménoë is opposed. The Frankish monks of
the shores of the Loire could not pardon him the destruction of their
monastery; and to avenge themselves, they invented the following
fable which they chanted in chorus:-
“IN THAT time lived a certain man called Noménoë :
Of poor parents he was born; his field he plowed himself;
But hidden in the earth an immense treasure he encountered;
By means of which among the rich many friends for himself he
made;
Then, clever in the art to deceive, he began himself to raise;
So that, thanks to his riches, he finished by dominating all,” etc.
QUIDAM fuit hoc tempore
Nomenoius nomine;
Pauper fuit progenie;
Agrum colebat vomere;
Sed reperit largissimum
Thesaurum terra conditum ;
Quo plurimorum divitum
Junxit sibi solatium.
Dehinc, per artem fallere,
Copit qui mox succrescere,
Donec super cunctos, ope
Transcenderet potentiæ, etc.
Poor Latin, poor rhymes, poor revenge.
## p. 15388 (#336) ##########################################
15388
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
THE FOSTER-BROTHER - TRÉGUIER DIALECT
ARGUMENT
This ballad, some variants of which I owe to the Abbé Henry,
and which is one of the most popular of Brittany. is sung under dif-
ferent titles in several parts of Europe. Fauriel has published it in
modern Greek; Bürger picked it up from the lips of a young German
peasant girl, and gave it an artificial form; (The Dead Go About
Alive' is but an artistic reproduction of the Danish ballad Aagé and
Elsé. A Welsh savant has assured me that his compatriots of the
mountains possess it in their language. All are based on the idea of
a duty, the obedience to the sacredness of the oath. The hero of the
primitive German ballad, like the Greek Constantine, like the Breton
cavalier, vowed to return, though dead; and he keeps his word.
We do not know to what epoch the composition of the two Ger-
man and Danish songs, nor that of the Greek ballad, date back: ours
must belong to the most flourishing period of the Middle Ages, chiv-
alric devotion shining therein by its sweetest lustre.
I
TH?
HE prettiest girl of high degree in all this country round was a
young maid of eighteen years, whose name was Gwennolaſk.
Dead was the old lord, her two poor sisters and her mother; her
own people all were dead, alas! except her stepmother.
It was pitiful to see her, weeping bitterly on the threshold of the
manor-door, so beauteous and so sweet!
Her eyes fixed on the sea, seeking there the vessel of her foster-
brother, her only consolation in the world, and whom since
long she had awaited;
Her eyes fixed upon the sea, and seeking there the vessel of her
foster-brother. Six years had passed since he had left his
country. -
Away from here, my daughter, and go and fetch the cattle; I do not
feed you to remain there seated. -
She awaked her two, three hours before the day in winter, to light
the fire and sweep the house;
To go to draw water at the fountain of the dwarfs, with a little
cracked pitcher and a broken pail:
The night was dark; the water had been disturbed by the foot of the
horse of a cavalier who returned from Nantes. -
Good health to you, young maid: are you betrothed ?
And I (what a child and fool I was! )— I replied: I wot naught of it. -
Are you betrothed ? Tell me, I pray you. —
Save your grace, dear sir: not yet am I betrothed. -
## p. 15389 (#337) ##########################################
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
15389
Well, take my golden ring, and say to your stepmother that unto a
cavalier who returns from Nantes you are betrothed:
That a great combat there has been; that his young esquire has been
killed over there, that he himself by a sword-thrust in the flank
has been wounded;
That in three weeks and three days he'll be restored, and to the
manor will come gayly and quickly to seek you. —
And she to run at once to the house and to look at the ring : it was
the ring that her foster-brother wore on his left hand.
II
One, two, three weeks had passed, and the young cavalier had not
yet returned.
You must be married; I have thought thereon in my heart, and for
you a proper man, my daughter, I've found. -
Save your grace, stepmother, I wish no husband other than my foster-
brother, who has come.
He gave me my wedding-ring of gold, and soon will come gayly and
quickly to seek me. -
Be quiet, if you please, with your wedding-ring of gold, or I will
take a rod to teach you how to speak.
Willy nilly, you shall wed Job the Lunatic, our young stable-boy. -
Wed Job! oh horror! I shall die of sorrow! My mother, my poor
little mother! if thou wert still alive! -
Go and lament in the court, mourn there as much as you will; in vain
will you make a wry face: in three days betrothed you'll be.
III
About that time the old grave-digger traveled through the country,
his bell in his hand, to carry the tidings of death.
Pray for the soul which hath been the lord cavalier, in his lifetime
a good man and a brave.
And who beyond Nantes was wounded to death by a sword-thrust
in his side, in a great battle over there.
To-morrow at the setting of the sun the watching will begin, and
thereafter from the white church to the tomb they will carry
him.
IV
How early you do go away! - Whether I am going? Oh, yes
indeed!
- But the feast is not yet done, nor is the evening spent. —
I cannot restrain the pity she inspires in me, and the horror which
awakes this herdsman who stands in the house face to face
with her!
## p. 15390 (#338) ##########################################
15390
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
Around the poor girl, who bitterly wept, every one was weeping, the
rector himself:
In the parish church this morn all were weeping, all, both young and
old; all except the stepmother.
The more the fiddlers in returning to the manor twanged their bows,
the more they consoled her, the more was her heart torn.
They took her to the table, to the place of honor for supper; she has
drunk no drop of water, nor eaten a morsel of bread.
They tried just now to undress her, to put her in her bed: she has
thrown away her ring, has torn her wedding fillet;
She has escaped from the house, her hair in disorder. Where she
has gone to hide, no one doth it know.
V
All lights were extinguished; in the manor every one profoundly slept;
elsewhere, the poor young maid was awake, to fever a prey. -
Who is there ? — I, Nola, thy foster-brother. -
It is thou, really, really thou! It is thou, thou, my dear brother! -
And she to go out, and to flee away on her brother's white horse
in saddle behind, encircling him with her little arm, seated
behind him. -
How fast we go, my brother! We have gone a hundred leagues, I
think! How happy I am near unto thee! So much was I never
before.
Is it still afar, thy mother's house? I would we were arrived. -
Ever hold me close, my sister: ere long we shall be there. -
The owl fed screeching before them; as well as the wild animals
frightened by the noise they made. -
How supple is thy horse, and thy armor how bright! I find thee
much grown, my brother.
I find thee very beautiful! Is it still far, thy manor ? -
Ever hold me close, my sister: we shall arrive apace.
Thy heart is icy; thy hair is wet; thy heart and thy hand are icy:
I fear that thou art cold. -
Ever hold me close, my sister: behold us quite near; hearest thou
not the piercing sounds of the gay musicians of our nuptials ? —
He had not finished speaking when his horse stopped all at once,
shivering and neighing very loud;
And they found themselves on an island where many people were
dancing;
Where young men and beautiful young girls, holding each other by
the hand, did play:
All about green trees with apples laden, and behind, the sun rising
on the mountains.
## p. 15391 (#339) ##########################################
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUE
15391
A little clear fountain flowed there; souls to life returning, were
drinking there;
Gwennola's mother was with them, and her two sisters also.
There was nothing there but pleasure, songs, and cries of joy.
VI
On the morrow morning, at the rising of the sun, young girls carried
the spotless body of little Gwennola from the white church to
the tomb.
NOTES
name.
As will be remembered, the German ballad ends, after the fash-
ion of the stories of the Helden-Buch,' by a catastrophe which
swallows up the two heroes; it is the same with the Greek ballad
published by Fauriel.
The ancient Bretons recognized several stages of existence through
which the soul passed; and Procopius placed the Druid elysium
beyond the ocean in one of the Britannic Isles, which he does not
The Welsh traditions are more precise: they expressly desig-
nate this island under the name of Isle of Avalon, or of the Apples.
It is the abiding-place of the heroes: Arthur, mortally wounded at
the battle of Camlann, is conducted there by the bards Merlin and
Taliesin, guided by Barinte the peerless boatman (Vita Merlini Cale-
doniensis'). The French author of the novel of William of the Short
Nose) has his hero Renoard transported thither by the fairies, with
the Breton heroes.
One of the Armorican lays of Mary of France also transports
thither the squireen Lanval. It is also there, one cannot doubt it,
that the foster-brother and his betrothed alight: but no soul, it was
said, could be admitted there before having received the funeral
rites; it remained wandering on the opposite bank until the moment
when the priest collected its bones and sang its funeral hymn.
This
opinion is as alive to-day in Lower Brittany as in the Middle Ages;
and we have seen celebrated there the same funeral ceremonies as
those of olden times.
Wacan. Sharjo
## p. 15392 (#340) ##########################################
15392
FRANÇOIS VILLON
(1431–146-? )
W
-
((
SHEN Wordsworth wrote in “The Leech-Gatherer' of mighty
poets in their misery dead,” he was thinking more of Mar
lowe and Burns and Chatterton than of Villon, if indeed the
name ever caught his attention in his visits to the French capital.
The French themselves at that time attached little importance to
it; and were far from suspecting that the title “Father of French
Poetry” would ever be taken from the courtly Ronsard himself
hardly yet seen in his true significance — and bestowed upon Fran-
çois Villon, Student, Poet, and House-
breaker,” as Mr. Stevenson candidly calls
him.
Now, even London has its Villon Soci.
ety, which in 1874 printed the first edition
of Mr. John Payne's English version of Vil.
lon's poems.
The revised and definitive
edition, with its fascinating introduction,
biographically and critically exhaustive, ap-
peared in 1892, — the same year that saw
the publication of M. Longnon's complete
edition based on the earliest known texts
and various manuscripts. Happily the Eng-
FRANÇOIS VILLON lish translation did not follow this edition
too soon to be brought into accordance with
it wherever it was not in error: Payne profited by the labors of
scholars who began their researches before and after the significant
spark struck in 1887 by M. Gaston Paris in his brief article, Une Ques-
tion Biographique sur Villon. ' This article - by one who, according
to M. Longnon, knows and appreciates Villon's verse better than any
one else — led to the discovery of several documents in the national
archives, consisting mainly of judicial processes against Villon and
his boon companions. It remained for M. Marcel Schwob to bring to
light the picturesque document of the Pet-au-déable (Devil's Stone), on
which the poet founded a romance he seems never to have published,
though it figures among the bequests of his (Greater Testament):-
-
«I do bequeath my library:
The Devil's Crake) Romaunt, whilere
## p. 15393 (#341) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15393
By Messire Guy de Tabarie –
A right trustworthy man — writ fair.
Beneath a bench it lies somewhere,
In quires. Though crudely it be writ,
The matter's so beyond compare
That it redeems the style of it. ”
(.
ma librairie,
Et le Rommant du Pet au Déable,
Lequel Maistre Guy Tabarie
Grossa, qui est homs veritable.
Par cayers est soubz une table.
Combien qu'il soit rudement fait,
La matiere est si tres notable,
Qu'elle amende tout le mesfait. )
It is interesting to note the likeness to English in the nebulous
French of a people whose national existence had not yet become
wholly uncontested. So librairie means the poet's own books — not the
place where he bought them; and in more than one passage he calls
himself le poure (not le pauvre) Villon.
The Pet-au-déable was a huge monolith attached to a tavern on
the right bank of the Seine, and serving partly as a boundary-stone,
to mark the limits of the property. A gang of students belonging
to the university, who had been going from bad to worse, had been
further demoralized in 1453 by contentions between the city author-
ities and the rector of the Sorbonné,— the latter going so far as to
close the university for a period of six months in the middle of the
term. Not content with stealing the meat-hooks from the market of
Saint Geneviève, a prank the butchers, when questioned, were dis-
posed to forgive, declaring that they and the students were very well
together; not content with stealing twenty-five hens from the Abbey
of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, nor even with robbing a passing wagon
of its cargo of choice wine,— the ring contrived with much mock
ceremony to remove the formidable Devil's Stone, tugging it over
the river, and setting it up on the hillside behind the Place Maubert;
whence to this day the worst riots of the Latin Quarter take their
rise. In vain did the authorities transport the stone to the Palais
Royal: the students recaptured and returned it to the chosen site.
Another great stone with which the mistress of the hotel had sup-
plied the place of the Pet-au-déable was likewise wrenched away
and set up on the hillside. That done, passers-by - above all, the
king's officers — were compelled to take an oath to respect the privi-
leges of the Pet-au-déable and its companion: the latter wore every
Sunday a fresh garland of rosemary; and on moonlight nights a
merry band, with the love-locks and short cloaks that have never
ceased to be characteristic of the pays tin, danced around the object
XXVI--963
1
D
## p. 15394 (#342) ##########################################
15394
FRANÇOIS VILLON
of their whimsical devotion. A few steps from the sinister spot,
where continued orgies gave rise to repeated brawlings, on a strip of
turf hard by Houdon's statue of Voltaire, stands the childish figure
of François Montcorbier, alias François Villon, alias François des
Loges, alias Michel Mouton, who was twenty years old when the
theft he endeavored to celebrate “in double quires "— and in which
he evidently took a lively interest, if not a leading part - was per-
petrated.
Just who Villon's parents were, and just where he was born,
despite the persistency with which he called himself Parisian, - is
so uncertain that his own suggestion,-
« Comme extraict que ie suis de fée,
»
which Mr. Payne translates —
“As sure as I'm a fairy's son,” –
is perhaps as satisfactory as any conclusion that can be reached.
The dare-deviltry of the defiant little sculptured figure, its jaunty
cloak and steeple-crowned hat and feather, its look of the goblin page
with a dash of sweetness, suggesting the classic faun, carry out the
uncanny impression. These neighboring statues bear a certain rela-
tion to each other. Some one said of Voltaire, who was called the
“ spoiled child,” “It was not Christianity that he attacked. ” Vol-
taire denounced celibacy and priestcraft, and Villon lost no oppor-
tunity to expose the hypocrisy and misdoings of monks and abbesses;
but the mocking statue does not mock at religion. It only seems
on the point of repeating, with birdlike sputter (gazouillement), some
bit of robbers' jargon, picked up even at that early period, or fling-
ing the challenging line -
«Mais que te nuysoit-elle en vie,
Mort ? »
(What harm did she in life to thee,
Death ? )
or that other challenge -
« Mais où sont les neiges d'antan ? »
If one were asked to search English literature for a single exam-
ple of felicitous translation, leaving nothing to be desired, one might
go far afield ere finding a better than Rossetti's rendering –
«But where are the snows of yester-year ? »
of the pathetic refrain of the Ballad of Old-Time Ladies. ' Were
this favorite ballad the only surviving portion of Villon's Greater
Tes nt? (his most considerable production), it would be almost
## p. 15395 (#343) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15395
enough to establish his claim to be regarded as a master. It shows
also the most obvious limitations of his genius: he was without
the modern feeling for nature; in this he falls far behind Ronsard.
He clung to Paris as Lamb clung to London, and like Alphonse
Daudet was uneasy away from it. • He thought of the country as
a place where -
“De gros pain bis viuent, d'orge, d'auoine,
Et boiuent eau, tout au long de l'année ;)
( They eat coarse bread of barley, sooth to say,
And drink but water from the heavens shed;)
of winter as a time when one stays in the house:
“Sur le Noël, morte saison
Que les loups se viuent de vent,
Et qu'on se tient en sa maison. )
Hence he has left us many portraits but no landscape. The rigid
requirements of the ballad form do not fully account for the bare
mention of names, showing, it is true, how much may be done with
slight material, but showing how little the poet cared for natural
objects, unless in chance comparison with human beings. But there
is plenty of heart in the ballad, nor does it appear that all the heart
he had went into his verse. The man who could devote a ballad
to the miseries of chimney-sweeps — Poor chimney-sweeps have toil
enough” (Poures housseurs ont assez peine) — was not without a
flicker of sympathy for a fellow-being; and it is hardly possible to
read in a candid spirit the beautiful ballad to the Virgin Mary,
written at his mother's request, without the conviction that he felt
the strength of that tie which in France, if anywhere, unites mother
and son.
The same ballad, and other noble passages, looked at in
a first-hand way, prove that Villon was capable of no small degree
of religious fervor. We have witnessed within the last decade the
spectacle of a poet in the depths of self-indulgence turning eagerly
to the consolations of religion,- and Paul Verlaine was a true child
of the boulevards. Why assume that there was no sincerity in the
prayers the fifteenth-century poet offered when the bell of the Sor-
bonne, striking the Angelus, bade him set aside for a moment the
writing of the Lesser Testament'? Why attempt to prove, with M.
Longnon, that Villon's three orphans, hungry,” “shoeless,” “naked
as a worm,” whom he harbored and endeavored to provide for in
every way, were after all young people of means, who employed him
as a tutor ? Is it quite safe to condemn in toto that which openly and
repeatedly and permanently criminates itself, — that which like Héloise
has dared call itself impure? On the other hand, M. Longnon's view
(
(
» «
## p. 15396 (#344) ##########################################
15396
FRANÇOIS VILLON
of Villon, and even Mr. Payne's, often seems almost too indulgent;
but the aim set forth in the latter's introduction has been nobly
fulfilled. In his own words, he has set ajar one more door, long
sadly moss-grown and ivy-hidden, into that enchanted wonderland
of French poetry, which glows with such springtide glory of many-
colored bloom, such autumn majesty of matured fruit. ”
Mr. Swinburne's rendering of the famous and ghastly Epitaph'
of Villon, made when he was expecting to be hung with five of his
companions, is simpler and on the whole closer than Mr. Payne's;
with the exception of the line where the image —
More pecked of birds than fruit on garden-wall » –
own
is strangely substituted for the dented thimble” of the original
reproduced by Mr. Payne. The poet Théodore de Banville puts into
the mouth of Pierre Gringoire a Ballade des Pendus' scarcely
yielding in fascination to the familiar “Epitaph of Villon. But the
real poet-rogue of the fifteenth century was not Pierre Gringoire,
as Victor Hugo and Théodore de Banville have led or misled us to
think. A lance at the didactic verse and irreproachable life of the
well-connected moralist Gringoire, makes it difficult to reconcile with
his character the passages that represent him rolling in the mud of
Montmartre or captivated by a pretty face at a window. . Plain facts
can never destroy the inimitable charm of passages that are their
excuse; but an observation attributed to Louis XI. — and it is
not unlikely that he made it - shows that the scapegrace whose
usual signature gave birth to the expression willonnerie bore off the
palm from all other vagabond minstrels. The King declared that he
could not afford to hang Villon; as the kingdom could boast of a
hundred thousand rascals of equal eminence, but not of one other
poet so accomplished in elegant speech and ingenious reasoning.
Undoubtedly the words were uttered at the most miserable mo-
ment in Villon's whole wretched career; when, if ever, he had lit-
erally touched bottom, let down by ropes to lie during the whole
summer of 1461 in a reeking den, or rather ditch, of the castle of
Mehun or Meung-sur-Loire, subjected to torture, and fed only on dry
bread and water. The offense for which Thibault, Archbishop of
Orléans, had caused him to be thus confined and corrected, seems to
have been his implication in the theft of a silver lamp from a church
in his diocese.
It was in this cul-de-basse-fosse that Villon is thought to have com-
posed his Dialogue between the Heart and Body of François Villon,'
a ballad worthy to rank with Shakespeare's sonnet, Poor soul, the
centre of my sinful earth! ' reminding us that Shakespeare and his
Henry V. traditionally passed through a period of wild-oat sowing
that Villon never outgrew. Had we only this ballad, instead of the
## p. 15397 (#345) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15397
considerable body of work he has left, we should hardly see less
clearly into his real state of mind, - his horror and disgust at losing
his moral footing, his sound judgment betrayed and belied by a fatal
weakness of purpose and want of self-control. Certainly the words —
«We poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness,
apply at least as well to Villon and Verlaine as to
«Him who walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plow upon the mountain-side. )
Villon's life had begun in 1431 — in the very month (May), it
would seem, when the great soul of Jeanne d'Arc went out; an event
that drew from him the laconic and otherwise characteristic con-
ment:-
“Et lehanne, la bonne Lorraine,
Qu' Englois brulerent à Rouen. »
« The good Lorrainer the English bare
Captive to Rouen and burned her there. "
He had taken the degree of M. A. in the University of Paris. Twice
sentenced to the gallows, he had escaped it only to enter upon a
course of dissipation which confirmed him in the companionship of
sneak-thieves, highwaymen, and women of the most depraved and
abandoned class. He had certainly killed his man,
,- a priest, who
however had dealt the first blow, compelling him to draw in self-
defense, and who made intercession for him with his dying breath.
According to Villon's own asseverations, which must have had
some foundation in fact, his rejection by the only woman he ever
loved had been the beginning of all his troubles. He holds her
responsible for his ruin; but turns her coldness and his chagrin to
account by making them the motif of his (Lesser Testament,' writ-
ten at an earlier period than the “Greater,' and representing him a
martyr to love bequeathing real and imaginary treasures to a motley
crowd of friends and enemies (all of them more or less notorious in
their time), before taking flight from the scene of his disappointment.
The young lady in question, whom Villon calls his rose, but whose
name was Catherine de Vaucelles, is thought to have been a niece of
Guillaume Villon, the canon of the cathedral church of Saint-Bénoit,
who took the boy under his protection, if not into his residence,-
the Hôtel de la Porte Rouge, adjoining the Sorbonne. Whether the
young student adopted the surname of his patron; whether they were
actual relatives, or only fellow-townsmen of the village of Villon, still
existing,- according to M. Longnon it is certain that the older man,
who is known to have been of a gentle disposition, never had the
## p. 15398 (#346) ##########################################
15398
FRANÇOIS VILLON
heart to turn away the younger; but continued to aid him, and to be
more than a father to him, long after his behavior had forfeited all
claim to forgiveness.
In spite of the grave fissures in his character, — in a manner by
reason of them,- he must at one time or another have enjoyed the
favor of many far above him in rank. When the newly crowned
monarch, Louis XI. , passing through the town and stopping at the
castle where Villon had been confined a whole summer, caused him
to be set at liberty, he was only thirty years old. Yet the author of
Il n'est bon bec que de Paris) (There's no right speech out of Paris
town), and other songs afterwards inserted in the Greater Testa-
ment,' already enjoyed a popularity seldom granted a poet in his
lifetime. Hence it is generally believed that the King's appreciation
of good literature, coupled with Villón's apparent claim (whether
founded on distant kinship or otherwise) to the special favor of the
Bourbon family, — disposing them to occasional good offices in his
behalf, — had more to do with his release than had the custom of
pardoning a certain number of criminals immediately after ascend-
ing the throne, - a custom however that Louis followed in many other
instances. Thus the king and the beggar came together for a mo-
ment; — that Villon could beg beautifully in verse is evident from
various ballads petitioning, now for a trifling sum of money, now for
the repeal of a death sentence; and it was a king who less than a
century later caused the complete works of Villon, so far as they
could be recovered, to be collected into a volume. This edition,
which the scholarly discrimination of Francis I. intrusted to the poet
Clément Marot, continued to be widely read till doubly overlaid and
obscured by the triumph of the seventeenth-century writers, succeed-
ing that of the Pléiade' that Ronsard created. Even Scott,- who
allowed few manifestations of genius or types of quaintness to escape
him, — while regretting in the notes to 'Quentin Durward' that it
would have seemed hardly wise to introduce D'Urfé, nowhere intro-
duces Villon. One cannot help thinking that this is precisely what he
would have done in that romance of the time of Louis XI. and the
banks of the Loire, — the very river that gave to the castle where the
poet was confined a portion of its name, - had Villon and his works
come out of their chrysalis a half-century sooner. But Mr. Swinburne
had not then sung of the
«Poor splendid wings, so frayed and soiled and torn ! »
The date of Villon's death is obscure. It seems impossible that he
could long have survived the completion of the Greater Testament,'
at the close of which he bewails his bodily ills, brought on by invet-
erate indulgence at the table no less than by his summer of fasting
## p. 15399 (#347) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15399
in the dungeon of Meung-sur-Loire. His plundering and banqueting
propensities were still further set forth in the Repues Franches,'
- a series of ribald rhymes by an unknown author, written while
the exploits of François Villon were still fresh in the minds of the
people.
Vile as the language and imagery of Villon often are, it is worthy
of note that nearly all his finest ballads are perfectly clean. The
tree bore five or six noble apples. These, rather than the worm-eaten
ones that weigh it to earth, have endeared themselves to modern
readers.
A contradiction to the world, an enigma to himself, declaring in
his despair that he understood all things save himself alone,-
« le congnois tout, fors que moy mesmes ;)
in more than one ballad begging all men coming after him to have
mercy on him; little dreaming how far his experimental methods, in
a century when political disintegration and reunion kept the language
in a state of fermentation, would determine the pitch of modern
poetry,- he might almost have hurled the bitter antistrophe -
a nameless life I lead,
A nameless death I die;
The friend whose lantern lights the mead
Were better mate than I.
And when I'm with my comrades met
Beneath the greenwood bough,
What once we were we all forget,
Nor think what we are now. )
From the Greater Testament
HERE BEGINNETH VILLON TO ENTER UPON MATTER FULL
OF ERUDITION AND OF FAIR KNOWLEDGE
N°
ow it is true that after years
Of anguish and of sorrowing,
Travail and toil and groans and tears,
And many a weary wandering,
Trouble hath wrought in me to bring
To point each shifting sentiment,
Teaching me many another thing
Than Averröes his Comment.
However, at my trials' worst,
When wandering in the desert ways,
## p. 15400 (#348) ##########################################
15400
FRANÇOIS VILLON
God, who the Emmaüs pilgrims erst
Did comfort, as the gospel says,
Showed me a certain resting-place,
And gave me gift of hope no less;
Though vile the sinner be and base,
Nothing he hates save stubbornness.
Sinned have I oft, as well I know;
But God my death doth not require,
But that I turn from sin, and so
Live righteously and shun hell-fire.
Whether one by sincere desire
Or counsel turn unto the Lord,
He sees; and casting off his ire,
Grace to repentance doth accord.
And as of its own motion shows,
Ev'n in the very first of it,
The noble Romaunt of the Rose,
Youth to the young one should remit,
So manhood do mature the wit.
And there, alack! the song says sooth:
They that such snares for me have knit
Would have me die in time of youth.
If for my death the common weal
Might anywise embettered be,
Death my own hand to me should deal
As felon, so God 'stablish me!
But unto none, that I can see,
Hindrance I do, alive or dead;
The hills, for one poor wight, perdie,
Will not be stirred out of their stead.
Whilom, when Alexander reigned,
A man that hight Diomedes
Before the Emperor was arraigned,
Bound hand and foot, like as one sees
A thief. A skimmer of the seas
Of those that course it far and nigh
He was; and so, as one of these,
They brought him to be doomed to die.
The Emperor bespoke him thus:---
"Why art thou a sea-plunderer? »
## p. 15401 (#349) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15401
The other, no wise timorous:-
“Why dost thou call me plunderer, sir ?
«
Is it, perchance, because I ear
Upon so mean a bark the sea ?
Could I but arm me with thy gear,
I would be emperor like to thee.
“What wouldst thou have? From sorry Fate,
That uses me with such despite
As I on no wise can abate,
Arises this my evil plight.
Let me find favor in thy sight
And have in mind the common saw:
In penury is little right;
Necessity knows no man's law. ”
Whenas the Emperor to his suit
Had harkened, much he wondered:
And "I thy fortune will commute
From bad to good,” to him he said;
And did. Thenceforward Diomed
Wronged none, but was a true man aye.
Thus have I in Valerius read,
Of Rome styled Greatest in his day.
If God had granted me to find
A king of like greatheartedness,
That had fair fate to me assigned,
Stooped I thenceforward to excess
Or ill, I would myself confess
Worthy to die by fire at stake.
Necessity makes folks transgress,
And want drives wolven from the brake.
My time of youth I do bewail,
That more than most lived merrily,
Until old age 'gan me assail,
For youth had passed unconsciously.
It wended not afoot from me,
Nor yet on horseback. Ah, how then ?
It fed away all suddenly,
And never will return again.
It's gone, and I am left behind,
Poor both in knowledge and in wit,
## p. 15402 (#350) ##########################################
15402
FRANÇOIS VILLON
Black as a berry, drear and dwined,
Coin, land, and goods, gone every whit;
Whilst those by kindred to me knit,
The due of Nature all forgot,
To disavow me have seen fit,
For lack of pelf to pay the scot.
When I of poverty complain,
Ofttimes my heart to me hath said,
“Man, wherefore murmur thus in vain ?
If thou hast no such plentihead
As had Jacques Caur, be comforted:
Better to live and rags to wear,
Than to have been a lord, and dead,
Rot in a splendid sepulchre. "
-
(Than to have been a lord! I say.
Alas, no longer is he one:
As the Psalm tells of it, -to-day
His place of men is all unknown. )
As for the rest, affair 'tis none
Of mine, that but a sinner be:
To theologians alone
The case belongs, and not to me.
For I am not, as well I know,
An angel's son, that crowned with light
Among the starry heavens doth go:
My sire is dead — God have his spright!
His body's buried out of sight.
I know my mother too must die,-
She knows it too, poor soul, aright, -
And soon her son by her must lie.
I know full well that rich and poor,
Villein and noble, high and low,
Laymen and clerks, gracious and dour,
Wise men and foolish, sweet of show
Or foul of favor, dames that go
Ruffed and rebatoed, great or small,
High-tired or hooded, — Death (I know)
Without exception seizes all.
Paris or Helen though one be, -
Who dies, in pain and drearihead,
## p. 15403 (#351) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15403
For lack of breath and blood dies he,
His gall upon his heart is shed:
Then doth he sweat, God knows how dread
A sweat, and none there is to allay
His ills; child, kinsman, in his stead
None will go bail for him that day.
Death makes him shiver and turn pale,
Sharpens his nose and swells his veins,
Puffs up his throat, makes his flesh fail,
His joints and nerves greatens and strains.
Fair women's bodies, soft as skeins
Of silk, so tender, smooth and rare,
Must you too suffer all these pains ?
Ay, or alive to heaven fare.
BALLAD OF OLD-TIME LADIES
TEL
ELL me where, in what land of shade,
Bides fair Flora of Rome, and where
Are Thaïs and Archipiade,
Cousins-german of beauty rare,
And Echo, more than mortal fair,
That when one calls by the river-flow
Or marish, answers out of the air ?
But what is become of last year's snow ?
Where did the learn'd Heloisa vade,
For whose sake Abelard might not spare
(Such dole for love on him was laid)
Manhood to lose and a cowl to wear ?
And where is the queen who willed whilere
That Buridan, tied in a sack, should go
Floating down Seine from the turret-stair ?
But what is become of last year's snow?
Blanche, too, the lily-white queen, that made
Sweet music as if she a siren were ;
Broad-foot Bertha; and Joan the maid,
The good Lorrainer, the English bare
Captive to Rouen and burned her there;
Beatrix, Eremburge, Alys, - lo!
Where are they, Virgin debonair ?
But what is become of last year's snow ?
## p. 15404 (#352) ##########################################
15404
FRANÇOIS VILLON
ENVOI
Prince, you may question how they fare
This week, or liefer this year, I trow:
Still shall the answer this burden bear,
But what is become of last year's snow?
BALLAD OF OLD-TIME LORLS
No. 1
(Following on the Same Subject)
W"
HERE is Calixtus, third of the name,
That died in the purple whiles ago,
Four years since he to the tiar came?
And the King of Arragon, Alfonso ?
The Duke of Bourbon, sweet of show,
And the Duke Arthur of Brittaine ?
And Charles the Seventh, the Good ? Heigho!
But where is the doughty Charlemaine ?
Likewise the King of Scots, whose shame
Was the half of his face (or folk say so),
Vermeil as amethyst held to the flame,
From chin to forehead all of a glow?
The King of Cyprus, of friend and foe
Renowned; and the gentle King of Spain,
Whose name, God 'ield me, I do not know?
But where is the doughty Charlemaine ?
Of many more might I ask the same,
Who are but dust that the breezes blow;
But I desist, for none may claim
To stand against Death, that lays all low:
Yet one more question before I go,-
Where is Lancelot, King of Behaine ?
And where are his valiant ancestors, trow?
But where is the doughty Charlemaine?
ENVOI
Where is Du Guesclin, the Breton prow?
Where Auvergne's Dauphin, and where again
The late good Duke of Alençon ? Lo!
But where is the doughty Charlemaine?
## p. 15405 (#353) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15405
BALLAD OF OLD-TIME LORDS
No. 2
W"
Here are the holy apostles gone,
Alb-clad and amice-tired and stoled
With the sacred tippet and that alone,
Wherewith, when he waxeth overbold,
The foul fiend's throttle they take and hold ?
All must come to the selfsame bay;
Sons and servants, their daya are told:
The wind carries their like away'.
Where is he now that held the throne
Of Constantine with the hands of gold ?
And the King of France, o'er all kings known
For grace and worship that was extolled,
Who convents and churches manifold
Built for God's service ?
- O fire! O fire! etc.
## p. 15383 (#331) ##########################################
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
15383
May the rainbow shine on thy forehead! may the rainbow shine!
O fire! O fire! O steel! O steel! O fire! O fire! O
steel and fire! O oak! O oak! O earth! O earth!
O waves! O waves! O earth! O earth and oak!
NOTE
It is probable that the expedition to which this wild song alludes
took place on the territory of the Nantais; for their wine is white,
as is that of which the bard speaks. The different beverages he
attributes to the Bretons - mulberry wine, beer, hydromel, apple wine
or cider are also those which were used in the sixth century.
Without any doubt we have here. two distinct songs, welded to-
gether by the power of time. The second begins at the thirteenth
stanza, and is a warrior's hymn in honor of the sun, a fragment of
the Sword Round of the ancient Bretons.
Like the Gaels and the
Germans, they were in the habit of surrendering themselves to it
during their festivals; it was executed by young men who knew the
art of jumping circularly to music, at the same time throwing their
swords into the air and catching them again. This is represented on
three Celtic medallions in M. Hucher's collection: on one a warrior
jumps up and down, while brandishing his battle-axe in one hand,
and with the other throwing it up behind his long floating head-
dress; on a second one, a warrior dances before a suspended sword,
and, says M. Henri Martin, he is evidently repeating the invocation :-
“O sword, O great chief of the battle-field! O sword, O great
king!
This, it is obvious, would cast us back into plain paganism. At
least it is certain that the language of the last seven stanzas is still
older than that of the other twelve. As for its form, the entire piece
is regularly alliterated from one end to the other, like the songs
of the primitive bards; and like them, is subject to the law of ter-
nary rhythm. I have no need to draw notice to what a clashing of
meeting weapons it recalls to the ear, and what a strident blast the
melody breathes.
THE TRIBUTE OF NOMÉNOË-CORNOUAILLE DIALECT
ARGUMENT
NOMÉNOË, the greatest king whom Brittany has had, pursued the
work of his country's deliverance, but by means different from his
predecessors'. He opposed ruse to force; he feigned to submit to the
foreign domination, and by these tactics succeeded in impeding an
## p. 15384 (#332) ##########################################
15384
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
enemy ten times superior in numbers. The emperor Charles, called
the Bald, was deceived by his demonstrations of obedience. He did
not guess that the Breton chief, like all politicians of superior genius,
knew how to wait. When the moment for acting came, Noménoë
threw off the mask: he drove the Franks beyond the rivers of the
Oust and of Vilaine, extending the frontiers of Brittany to Poitou;
and taking the towns of Nantes and Rennes from the enemy, which
since then have not ceased to make part of the Breton territory,
he delivered his compatriots from the tribute which they paid the
Franks (841).
“A remarkably beautiful piece of poetry,” says Augustin Thierry,
«and one full of details of the habits of a very ancient epoch,
recounts the event which determined this grand act of independence. ”
According to the illustrious French historian, “it is an energetically
symbolic picture of the prolonged inaction of the patriot prince,
and of his rude awakening when he judged the moment had come. ”
( Ten Years of Historical Studies,' 6th ed. , page 515. )
I
The golden grass is mown; it has misted suddenly.
To battle!
It mists, – said, from the summit of the mountain of Arez, the great
chief of the family:
To battle!
From the direction of the country of the Franks, for three weeks
more and more, more and more, has it misted,
So that in no wise can I see my son return to me.
Good merchant, who the country travels o'er, know'st thou news of
Karo, my son ? --
Mayhap, old father of Arez; but how looks he? what does he ? -
He is a man of sense and of heart; he it was who went to drive the
chariots to Rennes,
To drive to Rennes the chariots drawn by horses harnessed three by
three,
Divided between them, they that carry faithfully Brittany's tribute. -
If your son is the tribute-bearer, in vain will you await him.
When they came to weigh the silver, there lacked three pounds in
every hundred;
And the steward said: Thy head, vassal, shall complete the weight.
And drawing his sword, he cut off the head of your son.
Then by the hair he took it, and threw it on the scales. -
## p. 15385 (#333) ##########################################
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
15385
At these words the old chief of the family was like to swoon:
Violently on the rock he fell, hiding his face with his white hairs;
And his head in his hands, he cried with a moan: Karo, my son,
my poor, dear son!
II
Followed by his kindred, the great tribal chief set out;
The great tribal chief of the family approaches, he approaches the
stronghold of Noménoë. -
Tell me, head of the porters, — the master, is he at home?
Be he there, or not there, God keep him in good health! -
As these words he said, the lord to his dwelling returned ;
Returning from the hunt, preceded by his great playful dogs,
In his hand he held his bow, on his shoulder carried a boar,
And the fresh blood, quite warm from the mouth of the beast, flowed
upon his white hand.
Good day, good day to you, honest mountaineers! first of all to you,
great tribal chief:
What news is there, what wish you of me?
We come to know of you if a law there be; if in the sky there is a
God, and in Brittany a chief. —
In the sky there is a God, I believe, and in Brittany a chief if I
can.
He who will, he can; he who can, drives the Frank away
Drives away the Frank, defends his country, avenges it and will
avenge it.
He will avenge the living and dead, and me and Karo my child,
My poor son Karo, beheaded by the excommunicated Frank;
Beheaded in his prime, and whose head, golden as millet, was thrown
into the scales to balance the weight! -
beard.
And the old man began to weep, and his tears flowed down his gray
And they shone as the dew on a lily, at the rising of the sun.
When the lord saw this, a bloody and terrible oath he swore:
By this boar's head and the arrow which pierced it, I swear it:
Before I wash the blood from my right hand, I shall have washed my
country's wound!
INI
Noménoë has done that which no chief e'er did before:
He went to the shores of the sea with bags to gather pebbles,
Pebbles to tender as tribute to the steward of the bald king. *
Noménoë has done that which chief ne'er did before:
With polished silver has he shod his horses, and with reversed shoes.
* The Emperor Charles, surnamed the Bald.
## p. 15386 (#334) ##########################################
15386
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
:
Noménoë has done that which chief ne'er did before:
Prince as he is, in person to pay the tribute he has gone. —
Open wide the gates of Rennes, that I make entry in the town:
With chariots full of silver, 'tis Noménoë who is here. -
Alight, my lord; enter the castle; and leave your chariots in the
coach-house;
Leave to the equerry your white horse, and come and sup above.
Come to sup, and first of all to wash: there sounds the water-horn;
do you hear ? * -
I will wash in a moment, my lord, when the tribute shall have been
weighed. -
The first bag to be carried (and it was well tied),
The first bag which was brought, of the right weight was found.
The second bag which was brought, also of right weight was found.
The third bag that they weighed:- Aha! aha! this weight is not
right!
When the steward this saw, unto the bag his hand he extended;
Quickly he seized the cords, endeavoring to untie them. -
Wait, wait, Sir Steward, with my sword I will cut them. -
Hardly had he finished these words, that his sword leaped from the
scabbard,
That close to the shoulders the head of the Frank bent double it
struck,
And that it cut flesh and nerves and one chain of the scale beside.
The head fell in the scale, and thus the balance was made.
But behold the town in uproar :- Stop, stop the assassin!
He escapes, he escapes! bring torches! let us run quickly after him. -
Bring torches! 'twould be well: the night is black, and frozen the
road;
But I greatly fear you will wear out your shoes in following me,
Your shoes of blue gilded leather: as to your scales, you will use
them no more ;
You will use no more your golden scales in weighing the stones of
the Bretons.
- To battle! -
NOTE
.
This traditional portrait of the chief whose political genius saved
Breton independence is no less faithful, from its point of view, than
those of history itself. Thus, Augustin Thierry did not hesitate to
place it in the gallery which contemporaneous history has preserved
to us, and which he has so admirably restored.
The latter proves
* Before the repast, at the sound of the horn, one washed one's hands.
## p. 15387 (#335) ##########################################
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
15387
by its general spirit, if by no precise feature, the exactitude of the
anecdote. Before the time of Noménoë, for at least ten years, the
Bretons had paid tribute to the Franks; he delivered them from it:
that is the real fact. The tone of the ballad is in harmony with the
epoch.
As the head of the Frank charged to receive the tribute falls in
the scales, where the weight is lacking, and the poet cries with fero-
cious joy, “His head fell in the scale, and thus the balance was
made! ” one remembers that a few years ago, Morvan, the Lez-Breiz
of the Breton tradition, d, trembling with rage, “If I could see him,
he would have of me what he asks, this king of the Franks: I would
pay him the tribute in iron. ”
In regard to the epic song with which the liberator of Brittany
inspired the national Muse, the satirical song composed in the Abbey
of St. Florent against Noménoë is opposed. The Frankish monks of
the shores of the Loire could not pardon him the destruction of their
monastery; and to avenge themselves, they invented the following
fable which they chanted in chorus:-
“IN THAT time lived a certain man called Noménoë :
Of poor parents he was born; his field he plowed himself;
But hidden in the earth an immense treasure he encountered;
By means of which among the rich many friends for himself he
made;
Then, clever in the art to deceive, he began himself to raise;
So that, thanks to his riches, he finished by dominating all,” etc.
QUIDAM fuit hoc tempore
Nomenoius nomine;
Pauper fuit progenie;
Agrum colebat vomere;
Sed reperit largissimum
Thesaurum terra conditum ;
Quo plurimorum divitum
Junxit sibi solatium.
Dehinc, per artem fallere,
Copit qui mox succrescere,
Donec super cunctos, ope
Transcenderet potentiæ, etc.
Poor Latin, poor rhymes, poor revenge.
## p. 15388 (#336) ##########################################
15388
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
THE FOSTER-BROTHER - TRÉGUIER DIALECT
ARGUMENT
This ballad, some variants of which I owe to the Abbé Henry,
and which is one of the most popular of Brittany. is sung under dif-
ferent titles in several parts of Europe. Fauriel has published it in
modern Greek; Bürger picked it up from the lips of a young German
peasant girl, and gave it an artificial form; (The Dead Go About
Alive' is but an artistic reproduction of the Danish ballad Aagé and
Elsé. A Welsh savant has assured me that his compatriots of the
mountains possess it in their language. All are based on the idea of
a duty, the obedience to the sacredness of the oath. The hero of the
primitive German ballad, like the Greek Constantine, like the Breton
cavalier, vowed to return, though dead; and he keeps his word.
We do not know to what epoch the composition of the two Ger-
man and Danish songs, nor that of the Greek ballad, date back: ours
must belong to the most flourishing period of the Middle Ages, chiv-
alric devotion shining therein by its sweetest lustre.
I
TH?
HE prettiest girl of high degree in all this country round was a
young maid of eighteen years, whose name was Gwennolaſk.
Dead was the old lord, her two poor sisters and her mother; her
own people all were dead, alas! except her stepmother.
It was pitiful to see her, weeping bitterly on the threshold of the
manor-door, so beauteous and so sweet!
Her eyes fixed on the sea, seeking there the vessel of her foster-
brother, her only consolation in the world, and whom since
long she had awaited;
Her eyes fixed upon the sea, and seeking there the vessel of her
foster-brother. Six years had passed since he had left his
country. -
Away from here, my daughter, and go and fetch the cattle; I do not
feed you to remain there seated. -
She awaked her two, three hours before the day in winter, to light
the fire and sweep the house;
To go to draw water at the fountain of the dwarfs, with a little
cracked pitcher and a broken pail:
The night was dark; the water had been disturbed by the foot of the
horse of a cavalier who returned from Nantes. -
Good health to you, young maid: are you betrothed ?
And I (what a child and fool I was! )— I replied: I wot naught of it. -
Are you betrothed ? Tell me, I pray you. —
Save your grace, dear sir: not yet am I betrothed. -
## p. 15389 (#337) ##########################################
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
15389
Well, take my golden ring, and say to your stepmother that unto a
cavalier who returns from Nantes you are betrothed:
That a great combat there has been; that his young esquire has been
killed over there, that he himself by a sword-thrust in the flank
has been wounded;
That in three weeks and three days he'll be restored, and to the
manor will come gayly and quickly to seek you. —
And she to run at once to the house and to look at the ring : it was
the ring that her foster-brother wore on his left hand.
II
One, two, three weeks had passed, and the young cavalier had not
yet returned.
You must be married; I have thought thereon in my heart, and for
you a proper man, my daughter, I've found. -
Save your grace, stepmother, I wish no husband other than my foster-
brother, who has come.
He gave me my wedding-ring of gold, and soon will come gayly and
quickly to seek me. -
Be quiet, if you please, with your wedding-ring of gold, or I will
take a rod to teach you how to speak.
Willy nilly, you shall wed Job the Lunatic, our young stable-boy. -
Wed Job! oh horror! I shall die of sorrow! My mother, my poor
little mother! if thou wert still alive! -
Go and lament in the court, mourn there as much as you will; in vain
will you make a wry face: in three days betrothed you'll be.
III
About that time the old grave-digger traveled through the country,
his bell in his hand, to carry the tidings of death.
Pray for the soul which hath been the lord cavalier, in his lifetime
a good man and a brave.
And who beyond Nantes was wounded to death by a sword-thrust
in his side, in a great battle over there.
To-morrow at the setting of the sun the watching will begin, and
thereafter from the white church to the tomb they will carry
him.
IV
How early you do go away! - Whether I am going? Oh, yes
indeed!
- But the feast is not yet done, nor is the evening spent. —
I cannot restrain the pity she inspires in me, and the horror which
awakes this herdsman who stands in the house face to face
with her!
## p. 15390 (#338) ##########################################
15390
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUÉ
Around the poor girl, who bitterly wept, every one was weeping, the
rector himself:
In the parish church this morn all were weeping, all, both young and
old; all except the stepmother.
The more the fiddlers in returning to the manor twanged their bows,
the more they consoled her, the more was her heart torn.
They took her to the table, to the place of honor for supper; she has
drunk no drop of water, nor eaten a morsel of bread.
They tried just now to undress her, to put her in her bed: she has
thrown away her ring, has torn her wedding fillet;
She has escaped from the house, her hair in disorder. Where she
has gone to hide, no one doth it know.
V
All lights were extinguished; in the manor every one profoundly slept;
elsewhere, the poor young maid was awake, to fever a prey. -
Who is there ? — I, Nola, thy foster-brother. -
It is thou, really, really thou! It is thou, thou, my dear brother! -
And she to go out, and to flee away on her brother's white horse
in saddle behind, encircling him with her little arm, seated
behind him. -
How fast we go, my brother! We have gone a hundred leagues, I
think! How happy I am near unto thee! So much was I never
before.
Is it still afar, thy mother's house? I would we were arrived. -
Ever hold me close, my sister: ere long we shall be there. -
The owl fed screeching before them; as well as the wild animals
frightened by the noise they made. -
How supple is thy horse, and thy armor how bright! I find thee
much grown, my brother.
I find thee very beautiful! Is it still far, thy manor ? -
Ever hold me close, my sister: we shall arrive apace.
Thy heart is icy; thy hair is wet; thy heart and thy hand are icy:
I fear that thou art cold. -
Ever hold me close, my sister: behold us quite near; hearest thou
not the piercing sounds of the gay musicians of our nuptials ? —
He had not finished speaking when his horse stopped all at once,
shivering and neighing very loud;
And they found themselves on an island where many people were
dancing;
Where young men and beautiful young girls, holding each other by
the hand, did play:
All about green trees with apples laden, and behind, the sun rising
on the mountains.
## p. 15391 (#339) ##########################################
HERSART DE LA VILLEMARQUE
15391
A little clear fountain flowed there; souls to life returning, were
drinking there;
Gwennola's mother was with them, and her two sisters also.
There was nothing there but pleasure, songs, and cries of joy.
VI
On the morrow morning, at the rising of the sun, young girls carried
the spotless body of little Gwennola from the white church to
the tomb.
NOTES
name.
As will be remembered, the German ballad ends, after the fash-
ion of the stories of the Helden-Buch,' by a catastrophe which
swallows up the two heroes; it is the same with the Greek ballad
published by Fauriel.
The ancient Bretons recognized several stages of existence through
which the soul passed; and Procopius placed the Druid elysium
beyond the ocean in one of the Britannic Isles, which he does not
The Welsh traditions are more precise: they expressly desig-
nate this island under the name of Isle of Avalon, or of the Apples.
It is the abiding-place of the heroes: Arthur, mortally wounded at
the battle of Camlann, is conducted there by the bards Merlin and
Taliesin, guided by Barinte the peerless boatman (Vita Merlini Cale-
doniensis'). The French author of the novel of William of the Short
Nose) has his hero Renoard transported thither by the fairies, with
the Breton heroes.
One of the Armorican lays of Mary of France also transports
thither the squireen Lanval. It is also there, one cannot doubt it,
that the foster-brother and his betrothed alight: but no soul, it was
said, could be admitted there before having received the funeral
rites; it remained wandering on the opposite bank until the moment
when the priest collected its bones and sang its funeral hymn.
This
opinion is as alive to-day in Lower Brittany as in the Middle Ages;
and we have seen celebrated there the same funeral ceremonies as
those of olden times.
Wacan. Sharjo
## p. 15392 (#340) ##########################################
15392
FRANÇOIS VILLON
(1431–146-? )
W
-
((
SHEN Wordsworth wrote in “The Leech-Gatherer' of mighty
poets in their misery dead,” he was thinking more of Mar
lowe and Burns and Chatterton than of Villon, if indeed the
name ever caught his attention in his visits to the French capital.
The French themselves at that time attached little importance to
it; and were far from suspecting that the title “Father of French
Poetry” would ever be taken from the courtly Ronsard himself
hardly yet seen in his true significance — and bestowed upon Fran-
çois Villon, Student, Poet, and House-
breaker,” as Mr. Stevenson candidly calls
him.
Now, even London has its Villon Soci.
ety, which in 1874 printed the first edition
of Mr. John Payne's English version of Vil.
lon's poems.
The revised and definitive
edition, with its fascinating introduction,
biographically and critically exhaustive, ap-
peared in 1892, — the same year that saw
the publication of M. Longnon's complete
edition based on the earliest known texts
and various manuscripts. Happily the Eng-
FRANÇOIS VILLON lish translation did not follow this edition
too soon to be brought into accordance with
it wherever it was not in error: Payne profited by the labors of
scholars who began their researches before and after the significant
spark struck in 1887 by M. Gaston Paris in his brief article, Une Ques-
tion Biographique sur Villon. ' This article - by one who, according
to M. Longnon, knows and appreciates Villon's verse better than any
one else — led to the discovery of several documents in the national
archives, consisting mainly of judicial processes against Villon and
his boon companions. It remained for M. Marcel Schwob to bring to
light the picturesque document of the Pet-au-déable (Devil's Stone), on
which the poet founded a romance he seems never to have published,
though it figures among the bequests of his (Greater Testament):-
-
«I do bequeath my library:
The Devil's Crake) Romaunt, whilere
## p. 15393 (#341) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15393
By Messire Guy de Tabarie –
A right trustworthy man — writ fair.
Beneath a bench it lies somewhere,
In quires. Though crudely it be writ,
The matter's so beyond compare
That it redeems the style of it. ”
(.
ma librairie,
Et le Rommant du Pet au Déable,
Lequel Maistre Guy Tabarie
Grossa, qui est homs veritable.
Par cayers est soubz une table.
Combien qu'il soit rudement fait,
La matiere est si tres notable,
Qu'elle amende tout le mesfait. )
It is interesting to note the likeness to English in the nebulous
French of a people whose national existence had not yet become
wholly uncontested. So librairie means the poet's own books — not the
place where he bought them; and in more than one passage he calls
himself le poure (not le pauvre) Villon.
The Pet-au-déable was a huge monolith attached to a tavern on
the right bank of the Seine, and serving partly as a boundary-stone,
to mark the limits of the property. A gang of students belonging
to the university, who had been going from bad to worse, had been
further demoralized in 1453 by contentions between the city author-
ities and the rector of the Sorbonné,— the latter going so far as to
close the university for a period of six months in the middle of the
term. Not content with stealing the meat-hooks from the market of
Saint Geneviève, a prank the butchers, when questioned, were dis-
posed to forgive, declaring that they and the students were very well
together; not content with stealing twenty-five hens from the Abbey
of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, nor even with robbing a passing wagon
of its cargo of choice wine,— the ring contrived with much mock
ceremony to remove the formidable Devil's Stone, tugging it over
the river, and setting it up on the hillside behind the Place Maubert;
whence to this day the worst riots of the Latin Quarter take their
rise. In vain did the authorities transport the stone to the Palais
Royal: the students recaptured and returned it to the chosen site.
Another great stone with which the mistress of the hotel had sup-
plied the place of the Pet-au-déable was likewise wrenched away
and set up on the hillside. That done, passers-by - above all, the
king's officers — were compelled to take an oath to respect the privi-
leges of the Pet-au-déable and its companion: the latter wore every
Sunday a fresh garland of rosemary; and on moonlight nights a
merry band, with the love-locks and short cloaks that have never
ceased to be characteristic of the pays tin, danced around the object
XXVI--963
1
D
## p. 15394 (#342) ##########################################
15394
FRANÇOIS VILLON
of their whimsical devotion. A few steps from the sinister spot,
where continued orgies gave rise to repeated brawlings, on a strip of
turf hard by Houdon's statue of Voltaire, stands the childish figure
of François Montcorbier, alias François Villon, alias François des
Loges, alias Michel Mouton, who was twenty years old when the
theft he endeavored to celebrate “in double quires "— and in which
he evidently took a lively interest, if not a leading part - was per-
petrated.
Just who Villon's parents were, and just where he was born,
despite the persistency with which he called himself Parisian, - is
so uncertain that his own suggestion,-
« Comme extraict que ie suis de fée,
»
which Mr. Payne translates —
“As sure as I'm a fairy's son,” –
is perhaps as satisfactory as any conclusion that can be reached.
The dare-deviltry of the defiant little sculptured figure, its jaunty
cloak and steeple-crowned hat and feather, its look of the goblin page
with a dash of sweetness, suggesting the classic faun, carry out the
uncanny impression. These neighboring statues bear a certain rela-
tion to each other. Some one said of Voltaire, who was called the
“ spoiled child,” “It was not Christianity that he attacked. ” Vol-
taire denounced celibacy and priestcraft, and Villon lost no oppor-
tunity to expose the hypocrisy and misdoings of monks and abbesses;
but the mocking statue does not mock at religion. It only seems
on the point of repeating, with birdlike sputter (gazouillement), some
bit of robbers' jargon, picked up even at that early period, or fling-
ing the challenging line -
«Mais que te nuysoit-elle en vie,
Mort ? »
(What harm did she in life to thee,
Death ? )
or that other challenge -
« Mais où sont les neiges d'antan ? »
If one were asked to search English literature for a single exam-
ple of felicitous translation, leaving nothing to be desired, one might
go far afield ere finding a better than Rossetti's rendering –
«But where are the snows of yester-year ? »
of the pathetic refrain of the Ballad of Old-Time Ladies. ' Were
this favorite ballad the only surviving portion of Villon's Greater
Tes nt? (his most considerable production), it would be almost
## p. 15395 (#343) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15395
enough to establish his claim to be regarded as a master. It shows
also the most obvious limitations of his genius: he was without
the modern feeling for nature; in this he falls far behind Ronsard.
He clung to Paris as Lamb clung to London, and like Alphonse
Daudet was uneasy away from it. • He thought of the country as
a place where -
“De gros pain bis viuent, d'orge, d'auoine,
Et boiuent eau, tout au long de l'année ;)
( They eat coarse bread of barley, sooth to say,
And drink but water from the heavens shed;)
of winter as a time when one stays in the house:
“Sur le Noël, morte saison
Que les loups se viuent de vent,
Et qu'on se tient en sa maison. )
Hence he has left us many portraits but no landscape. The rigid
requirements of the ballad form do not fully account for the bare
mention of names, showing, it is true, how much may be done with
slight material, but showing how little the poet cared for natural
objects, unless in chance comparison with human beings. But there
is plenty of heart in the ballad, nor does it appear that all the heart
he had went into his verse. The man who could devote a ballad
to the miseries of chimney-sweeps — Poor chimney-sweeps have toil
enough” (Poures housseurs ont assez peine) — was not without a
flicker of sympathy for a fellow-being; and it is hardly possible to
read in a candid spirit the beautiful ballad to the Virgin Mary,
written at his mother's request, without the conviction that he felt
the strength of that tie which in France, if anywhere, unites mother
and son.
The same ballad, and other noble passages, looked at in
a first-hand way, prove that Villon was capable of no small degree
of religious fervor. We have witnessed within the last decade the
spectacle of a poet in the depths of self-indulgence turning eagerly
to the consolations of religion,- and Paul Verlaine was a true child
of the boulevards. Why assume that there was no sincerity in the
prayers the fifteenth-century poet offered when the bell of the Sor-
bonne, striking the Angelus, bade him set aside for a moment the
writing of the Lesser Testament'? Why attempt to prove, with M.
Longnon, that Villon's three orphans, hungry,” “shoeless,” “naked
as a worm,” whom he harbored and endeavored to provide for in
every way, were after all young people of means, who employed him
as a tutor ? Is it quite safe to condemn in toto that which openly and
repeatedly and permanently criminates itself, — that which like Héloise
has dared call itself impure? On the other hand, M. Longnon's view
(
(
» «
## p. 15396 (#344) ##########################################
15396
FRANÇOIS VILLON
of Villon, and even Mr. Payne's, often seems almost too indulgent;
but the aim set forth in the latter's introduction has been nobly
fulfilled. In his own words, he has set ajar one more door, long
sadly moss-grown and ivy-hidden, into that enchanted wonderland
of French poetry, which glows with such springtide glory of many-
colored bloom, such autumn majesty of matured fruit. ”
Mr. Swinburne's rendering of the famous and ghastly Epitaph'
of Villon, made when he was expecting to be hung with five of his
companions, is simpler and on the whole closer than Mr. Payne's;
with the exception of the line where the image —
More pecked of birds than fruit on garden-wall » –
own
is strangely substituted for the dented thimble” of the original
reproduced by Mr. Payne. The poet Théodore de Banville puts into
the mouth of Pierre Gringoire a Ballade des Pendus' scarcely
yielding in fascination to the familiar “Epitaph of Villon. But the
real poet-rogue of the fifteenth century was not Pierre Gringoire,
as Victor Hugo and Théodore de Banville have led or misled us to
think. A lance at the didactic verse and irreproachable life of the
well-connected moralist Gringoire, makes it difficult to reconcile with
his character the passages that represent him rolling in the mud of
Montmartre or captivated by a pretty face at a window. . Plain facts
can never destroy the inimitable charm of passages that are their
excuse; but an observation attributed to Louis XI. — and it is
not unlikely that he made it - shows that the scapegrace whose
usual signature gave birth to the expression willonnerie bore off the
palm from all other vagabond minstrels. The King declared that he
could not afford to hang Villon; as the kingdom could boast of a
hundred thousand rascals of equal eminence, but not of one other
poet so accomplished in elegant speech and ingenious reasoning.
Undoubtedly the words were uttered at the most miserable mo-
ment in Villon's whole wretched career; when, if ever, he had lit-
erally touched bottom, let down by ropes to lie during the whole
summer of 1461 in a reeking den, or rather ditch, of the castle of
Mehun or Meung-sur-Loire, subjected to torture, and fed only on dry
bread and water. The offense for which Thibault, Archbishop of
Orléans, had caused him to be thus confined and corrected, seems to
have been his implication in the theft of a silver lamp from a church
in his diocese.
It was in this cul-de-basse-fosse that Villon is thought to have com-
posed his Dialogue between the Heart and Body of François Villon,'
a ballad worthy to rank with Shakespeare's sonnet, Poor soul, the
centre of my sinful earth! ' reminding us that Shakespeare and his
Henry V. traditionally passed through a period of wild-oat sowing
that Villon never outgrew. Had we only this ballad, instead of the
## p. 15397 (#345) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15397
considerable body of work he has left, we should hardly see less
clearly into his real state of mind, - his horror and disgust at losing
his moral footing, his sound judgment betrayed and belied by a fatal
weakness of purpose and want of self-control. Certainly the words —
«We poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness,
apply at least as well to Villon and Verlaine as to
«Him who walked in glory and in joy,
Following his plow upon the mountain-side. )
Villon's life had begun in 1431 — in the very month (May), it
would seem, when the great soul of Jeanne d'Arc went out; an event
that drew from him the laconic and otherwise characteristic con-
ment:-
“Et lehanne, la bonne Lorraine,
Qu' Englois brulerent à Rouen. »
« The good Lorrainer the English bare
Captive to Rouen and burned her there. "
He had taken the degree of M. A. in the University of Paris. Twice
sentenced to the gallows, he had escaped it only to enter upon a
course of dissipation which confirmed him in the companionship of
sneak-thieves, highwaymen, and women of the most depraved and
abandoned class. He had certainly killed his man,
,- a priest, who
however had dealt the first blow, compelling him to draw in self-
defense, and who made intercession for him with his dying breath.
According to Villon's own asseverations, which must have had
some foundation in fact, his rejection by the only woman he ever
loved had been the beginning of all his troubles. He holds her
responsible for his ruin; but turns her coldness and his chagrin to
account by making them the motif of his (Lesser Testament,' writ-
ten at an earlier period than the “Greater,' and representing him a
martyr to love bequeathing real and imaginary treasures to a motley
crowd of friends and enemies (all of them more or less notorious in
their time), before taking flight from the scene of his disappointment.
The young lady in question, whom Villon calls his rose, but whose
name was Catherine de Vaucelles, is thought to have been a niece of
Guillaume Villon, the canon of the cathedral church of Saint-Bénoit,
who took the boy under his protection, if not into his residence,-
the Hôtel de la Porte Rouge, adjoining the Sorbonne. Whether the
young student adopted the surname of his patron; whether they were
actual relatives, or only fellow-townsmen of the village of Villon, still
existing,- according to M. Longnon it is certain that the older man,
who is known to have been of a gentle disposition, never had the
## p. 15398 (#346) ##########################################
15398
FRANÇOIS VILLON
heart to turn away the younger; but continued to aid him, and to be
more than a father to him, long after his behavior had forfeited all
claim to forgiveness.
In spite of the grave fissures in his character, — in a manner by
reason of them,- he must at one time or another have enjoyed the
favor of many far above him in rank. When the newly crowned
monarch, Louis XI. , passing through the town and stopping at the
castle where Villon had been confined a whole summer, caused him
to be set at liberty, he was only thirty years old. Yet the author of
Il n'est bon bec que de Paris) (There's no right speech out of Paris
town), and other songs afterwards inserted in the Greater Testa-
ment,' already enjoyed a popularity seldom granted a poet in his
lifetime. Hence it is generally believed that the King's appreciation
of good literature, coupled with Villón's apparent claim (whether
founded on distant kinship or otherwise) to the special favor of the
Bourbon family, — disposing them to occasional good offices in his
behalf, — had more to do with his release than had the custom of
pardoning a certain number of criminals immediately after ascend-
ing the throne, - a custom however that Louis followed in many other
instances. Thus the king and the beggar came together for a mo-
ment; — that Villon could beg beautifully in verse is evident from
various ballads petitioning, now for a trifling sum of money, now for
the repeal of a death sentence; and it was a king who less than a
century later caused the complete works of Villon, so far as they
could be recovered, to be collected into a volume. This edition,
which the scholarly discrimination of Francis I. intrusted to the poet
Clément Marot, continued to be widely read till doubly overlaid and
obscured by the triumph of the seventeenth-century writers, succeed-
ing that of the Pléiade' that Ronsard created. Even Scott,- who
allowed few manifestations of genius or types of quaintness to escape
him, — while regretting in the notes to 'Quentin Durward' that it
would have seemed hardly wise to introduce D'Urfé, nowhere intro-
duces Villon. One cannot help thinking that this is precisely what he
would have done in that romance of the time of Louis XI. and the
banks of the Loire, — the very river that gave to the castle where the
poet was confined a portion of its name, - had Villon and his works
come out of their chrysalis a half-century sooner. But Mr. Swinburne
had not then sung of the
«Poor splendid wings, so frayed and soiled and torn ! »
The date of Villon's death is obscure. It seems impossible that he
could long have survived the completion of the Greater Testament,'
at the close of which he bewails his bodily ills, brought on by invet-
erate indulgence at the table no less than by his summer of fasting
## p. 15399 (#347) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15399
in the dungeon of Meung-sur-Loire. His plundering and banqueting
propensities were still further set forth in the Repues Franches,'
- a series of ribald rhymes by an unknown author, written while
the exploits of François Villon were still fresh in the minds of the
people.
Vile as the language and imagery of Villon often are, it is worthy
of note that nearly all his finest ballads are perfectly clean. The
tree bore five or six noble apples. These, rather than the worm-eaten
ones that weigh it to earth, have endeared themselves to modern
readers.
A contradiction to the world, an enigma to himself, declaring in
his despair that he understood all things save himself alone,-
« le congnois tout, fors que moy mesmes ;)
in more than one ballad begging all men coming after him to have
mercy on him; little dreaming how far his experimental methods, in
a century when political disintegration and reunion kept the language
in a state of fermentation, would determine the pitch of modern
poetry,- he might almost have hurled the bitter antistrophe -
a nameless life I lead,
A nameless death I die;
The friend whose lantern lights the mead
Were better mate than I.
And when I'm with my comrades met
Beneath the greenwood bough,
What once we were we all forget,
Nor think what we are now. )
From the Greater Testament
HERE BEGINNETH VILLON TO ENTER UPON MATTER FULL
OF ERUDITION AND OF FAIR KNOWLEDGE
N°
ow it is true that after years
Of anguish and of sorrowing,
Travail and toil and groans and tears,
And many a weary wandering,
Trouble hath wrought in me to bring
To point each shifting sentiment,
Teaching me many another thing
Than Averröes his Comment.
However, at my trials' worst,
When wandering in the desert ways,
## p. 15400 (#348) ##########################################
15400
FRANÇOIS VILLON
God, who the Emmaüs pilgrims erst
Did comfort, as the gospel says,
Showed me a certain resting-place,
And gave me gift of hope no less;
Though vile the sinner be and base,
Nothing he hates save stubbornness.
Sinned have I oft, as well I know;
But God my death doth not require,
But that I turn from sin, and so
Live righteously and shun hell-fire.
Whether one by sincere desire
Or counsel turn unto the Lord,
He sees; and casting off his ire,
Grace to repentance doth accord.
And as of its own motion shows,
Ev'n in the very first of it,
The noble Romaunt of the Rose,
Youth to the young one should remit,
So manhood do mature the wit.
And there, alack! the song says sooth:
They that such snares for me have knit
Would have me die in time of youth.
If for my death the common weal
Might anywise embettered be,
Death my own hand to me should deal
As felon, so God 'stablish me!
But unto none, that I can see,
Hindrance I do, alive or dead;
The hills, for one poor wight, perdie,
Will not be stirred out of their stead.
Whilom, when Alexander reigned,
A man that hight Diomedes
Before the Emperor was arraigned,
Bound hand and foot, like as one sees
A thief. A skimmer of the seas
Of those that course it far and nigh
He was; and so, as one of these,
They brought him to be doomed to die.
The Emperor bespoke him thus:---
"Why art thou a sea-plunderer? »
## p. 15401 (#349) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15401
The other, no wise timorous:-
“Why dost thou call me plunderer, sir ?
«
Is it, perchance, because I ear
Upon so mean a bark the sea ?
Could I but arm me with thy gear,
I would be emperor like to thee.
“What wouldst thou have? From sorry Fate,
That uses me with such despite
As I on no wise can abate,
Arises this my evil plight.
Let me find favor in thy sight
And have in mind the common saw:
In penury is little right;
Necessity knows no man's law. ”
Whenas the Emperor to his suit
Had harkened, much he wondered:
And "I thy fortune will commute
From bad to good,” to him he said;
And did. Thenceforward Diomed
Wronged none, but was a true man aye.
Thus have I in Valerius read,
Of Rome styled Greatest in his day.
If God had granted me to find
A king of like greatheartedness,
That had fair fate to me assigned,
Stooped I thenceforward to excess
Or ill, I would myself confess
Worthy to die by fire at stake.
Necessity makes folks transgress,
And want drives wolven from the brake.
My time of youth I do bewail,
That more than most lived merrily,
Until old age 'gan me assail,
For youth had passed unconsciously.
It wended not afoot from me,
Nor yet on horseback. Ah, how then ?
It fed away all suddenly,
And never will return again.
It's gone, and I am left behind,
Poor both in knowledge and in wit,
## p. 15402 (#350) ##########################################
15402
FRANÇOIS VILLON
Black as a berry, drear and dwined,
Coin, land, and goods, gone every whit;
Whilst those by kindred to me knit,
The due of Nature all forgot,
To disavow me have seen fit,
For lack of pelf to pay the scot.
When I of poverty complain,
Ofttimes my heart to me hath said,
“Man, wherefore murmur thus in vain ?
If thou hast no such plentihead
As had Jacques Caur, be comforted:
Better to live and rags to wear,
Than to have been a lord, and dead,
Rot in a splendid sepulchre. "
-
(Than to have been a lord! I say.
Alas, no longer is he one:
As the Psalm tells of it, -to-day
His place of men is all unknown. )
As for the rest, affair 'tis none
Of mine, that but a sinner be:
To theologians alone
The case belongs, and not to me.
For I am not, as well I know,
An angel's son, that crowned with light
Among the starry heavens doth go:
My sire is dead — God have his spright!
His body's buried out of sight.
I know my mother too must die,-
She knows it too, poor soul, aright, -
And soon her son by her must lie.
I know full well that rich and poor,
Villein and noble, high and low,
Laymen and clerks, gracious and dour,
Wise men and foolish, sweet of show
Or foul of favor, dames that go
Ruffed and rebatoed, great or small,
High-tired or hooded, — Death (I know)
Without exception seizes all.
Paris or Helen though one be, -
Who dies, in pain and drearihead,
## p. 15403 (#351) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15403
For lack of breath and blood dies he,
His gall upon his heart is shed:
Then doth he sweat, God knows how dread
A sweat, and none there is to allay
His ills; child, kinsman, in his stead
None will go bail for him that day.
Death makes him shiver and turn pale,
Sharpens his nose and swells his veins,
Puffs up his throat, makes his flesh fail,
His joints and nerves greatens and strains.
Fair women's bodies, soft as skeins
Of silk, so tender, smooth and rare,
Must you too suffer all these pains ?
Ay, or alive to heaven fare.
BALLAD OF OLD-TIME LADIES
TEL
ELL me where, in what land of shade,
Bides fair Flora of Rome, and where
Are Thaïs and Archipiade,
Cousins-german of beauty rare,
And Echo, more than mortal fair,
That when one calls by the river-flow
Or marish, answers out of the air ?
But what is become of last year's snow ?
Where did the learn'd Heloisa vade,
For whose sake Abelard might not spare
(Such dole for love on him was laid)
Manhood to lose and a cowl to wear ?
And where is the queen who willed whilere
That Buridan, tied in a sack, should go
Floating down Seine from the turret-stair ?
But what is become of last year's snow?
Blanche, too, the lily-white queen, that made
Sweet music as if she a siren were ;
Broad-foot Bertha; and Joan the maid,
The good Lorrainer, the English bare
Captive to Rouen and burned her there;
Beatrix, Eremburge, Alys, - lo!
Where are they, Virgin debonair ?
But what is become of last year's snow ?
## p. 15404 (#352) ##########################################
15404
FRANÇOIS VILLON
ENVOI
Prince, you may question how they fare
This week, or liefer this year, I trow:
Still shall the answer this burden bear,
But what is become of last year's snow?
BALLAD OF OLD-TIME LORLS
No. 1
(Following on the Same Subject)
W"
HERE is Calixtus, third of the name,
That died in the purple whiles ago,
Four years since he to the tiar came?
And the King of Arragon, Alfonso ?
The Duke of Bourbon, sweet of show,
And the Duke Arthur of Brittaine ?
And Charles the Seventh, the Good ? Heigho!
But where is the doughty Charlemaine ?
Likewise the King of Scots, whose shame
Was the half of his face (or folk say so),
Vermeil as amethyst held to the flame,
From chin to forehead all of a glow?
The King of Cyprus, of friend and foe
Renowned; and the gentle King of Spain,
Whose name, God 'ield me, I do not know?
But where is the doughty Charlemaine ?
Of many more might I ask the same,
Who are but dust that the breezes blow;
But I desist, for none may claim
To stand against Death, that lays all low:
Yet one more question before I go,-
Where is Lancelot, King of Behaine ?
And where are his valiant ancestors, trow?
But where is the doughty Charlemaine?
ENVOI
Where is Du Guesclin, the Breton prow?
Where Auvergne's Dauphin, and where again
The late good Duke of Alençon ? Lo!
But where is the doughty Charlemaine?
## p. 15405 (#353) ##########################################
FRANÇOIS VILLON
15405
BALLAD OF OLD-TIME LORDS
No. 2
W"
Here are the holy apostles gone,
Alb-clad and amice-tired and stoled
With the sacred tippet and that alone,
Wherewith, when he waxeth overbold,
The foul fiend's throttle they take and hold ?
All must come to the selfsame bay;
Sons and servants, their daya are told:
The wind carries their like away'.
Where is he now that held the throne
Of Constantine with the hands of gold ?
And the King of France, o'er all kings known
For grace and worship that was extolled,
Who convents and churches manifold
Built for God's service ?
