"SONGS OF OLD FRANCE."

Otago Witness, Issue 3331, 16 January 1918, Page 58

"SONGS OF OLD FRANCE."

By Jkssie Mackay. It is an Englishman, Percy Allen, who has compiled this book of songs on that old, romantic life of France which is part of the very woof and texture of European literature. Mr Allen has taken a wide field. - Some are genuinely old—a gentle morality, say, of Alain Chartier, the fifteenth century singer, whom the kiss of a princess made immortal. It was Margaret of Scotland, mismatched with Louis XI, who, finding Chartier asleep on a palace sofa, bent and kissed, not the man, as she told her startled attendants, but " the mouth -whence had proceeded such beautiful discourses." And it was true homage to art the fair young princess tendered, for the poet was at that time neither young nor handsome. Others of these songs are modern, such as those of Jean liichepin and the Laureate of the Apaches, Redelsperger. But they are bound together first by that intangible lyric ribbon that has drawn down the French roudel and ballade to be a singing model through all the centuries, and then by the dedication to Yve/te Guilbert, who, more than any other, has brought these French verses before English hearers. in her inimitable recitals. All the modern songs are from. her own repertoire. Of their fidelity to the original not many New Zealand readers are qualified to judge; but these translations are at least true poetry, true lyric, and truly saturated with a something half grim and half sprightly,- half squalid and half of Faerie, which is all of France.

From the fifteenth century floats down a typical echo •. "*" I' come into our garden! fair, Three Love-flowers find I there; One I take, and two I spare, In this flowering season: Alas! Now- shall I pass away, This long, lingering month of May.

I there with a ohaplet knit, Three ways it escapes my wit; The fourth way I finish it In this flowering season: Alas! How shall I pass away, This long, -lingering month of May?

Light as gossamer and dainty as Dresden china was the Pleiade school founded by Joachim du Bellay -and Pierre de Ronsard in that stormy decade that saw Luther and the princes of the Roman Catholic Church hurling rocks of controversy throughout Europe. This is the way the lyric " unrealists " of old France heard the winnowers of corn invoking the winds—for not all the pastorals were sacred, to shepherds and shepherdesses only:" To yon troops fleeting, "Whose light wings beating, Through the world stray; And with softest murmur The shadowy verdure ' Tenderly sway.

I offer these violets, These lilies and flowerets. These rosea to you. , r

While I toil here below. At the corn I winnow, , In the noonday heat.

Neat, crisp, and truly Parisian is this seventeenth century song of the great Moliere:

Though fair Paris unto me By her king were given, / So I must for ever be From my lady riven.

To King Henry I'd reply: "You were still my debtor; Take your Paris back, for I Love my Lady better." It was a Frenchwoman of the eighteenth century, the Princesse de .SalmDyck, who anticipated " Enoch Arden" with this "Sailor's Return": When the sailor from war returns, Quite quietly; Shoes agape and garments torn; "Sailor, where com'st thou, travel-worn, So quietly?" "Hostess, back from the wars I fling, Quite quietly; Bid them a bowl of red wine bring, That eailor-man may drink and sing, Quite quietly." The sailor drinks and the hostess weeps: "For a husband lost my lids arc „wet; You are so like him, Sir, anc} yet, Quite quietly.

One morning news of him I read, Quite quietly, Saying he was dead and buried. Long vears had passed: again I wed, Quite quietly."

The sailor bold drained dry his glass, Quite quietly; Drained dry his glass, tears falling fast Quietly into the night he passed, Quite quietly.

Here the quaint refrain, so tedious in English poems like "The Rhyme of the Duchess May," redeems itself in the very atmosphere of wordless self-effacement and sacrifice. . It is a Frenchwoman, contemporary ol our own Felicia Hemans and L. E. L., Madame Olivier, who pours out her soul "To a Perfect Friend": v In spite of death, in spite of. life, I will follow and adore thee: In spite of self, of follies ripe, v My being breathes before thee.

The ' lightning* soundeth not the night As thy piercing glance doth sound me; The vast world's orb of laughing light, Hath not such anna around me.

"Fear me no more ; still faithful be; By thy side evermore am I; But keep a wing to follow me, For I dwell in Eternity." It is Madame Olivier, too, who retells the old tale of St. Nicholas.and the three murdered children in such a way that the horror is dissipated and only the beauty of the miracle remains—that miracle of

* "Songs of Old France." By Percy Allen. Fxanci3 Griffiths, London.

resurrection that follows the prayer of a Christian Elijah: "Little children, who, sleeping lie, The g rcat g a int Nicholas am I." The Saint holds up three fingers. See! Up the httle ones rise, .all three: Three httle children who have been Out in a harvest field to glean

The first said: "I have slept so well." Ine second: "Better than I can tell." **« youngest of the three replies: I thought I was in Paradise"— Ihroe little children who have been Out m a harvest field to glfean. "The Three Hussars" is a model of condensed lyric drama. The soldiers return and ask the bellringer they meet for their loves of last year : "But Margoton I used to meet; I rang for her vows last year. She is Sister Marguerite, In the Convent .a league from here." ."And Joannetcn, mine, of old time, Before last December's cold, I was ringing her wedding chime; Her first-born is ten days old." "My'Madeline," the third said, "say She is happy? Most happy of all. Three months ago this very day I wa.s tolling her burial." "Ringer, when next you meet Margiierito, In, tha Convent of Sacred Head, Lay my blessing down at her feet, And tell ner I'm off to wed."

"Ringer, when nei: you see Jeanneton In her home, tell her in my name, That I cm a captain now, and gone A-hunting fox bigger game." when you se*> my mother again. Bend low the white head before; Then toll her I still at the wars remain, And that I return no more."

For a last quotation let us look at this bold eclogue of a modern singer, where the mower says: "Whence comest thou: whither away dost hi©

So early, Lord) Star of the Morning? With thy gold hair streaming against the sky,

Apparellod for heaven's adorning, With those soft, clear eyes of depeening blue, So freshly bathed, in the'.Booming dew? And didst thou then think to be here alone? No, truly; already we are mowing. We have mown for more than half-an-hour gone,

The young day is good for our growing. Who are passing theTe in the morning ray, With linen and baskets through the mead? They are the maidens, so lively and! gay, Bringing the soup that in faith we need. And Mariarna—look down on her, StarSmiles already on' me from afar. Were I the son. of the Sun, And my Marianna came by, * I would follow her, lost or won, Had I to descend from the sky. Though my mother weep for her eon, I would follow my love or die; I would do what ■ must needs b& done, And God pardon it me, pray I." More might be taken from new and! old—from Francois- Villou, say, " our sad, bad, mad, glad brother," aa Swinburne called him. But the incomparable Francois, so idolised by the men critics of five centuries, must be more readable when less translatable, for in our humble judgment the uncensored 'v/erses in this volume would not set so much as a trout-creek on fire now.

Enough perhaps has been shown, despite the losses of translation, to give something of the quaint, child-like, half earthenware, half filigree charm of French lyric and ballad poetry, the soul of which has survived throughout so many troubled years, so many ensanguined upheavals.