cidences, it may be worth noticing that the "Fause Foodrage," the traitor in a Scotch ballad, seems to recur as the Fordresse of a song in which a villain kills his mistress,
"J'ai tué ma pastourelle,
La plus belle fille du pays."
M. Auricoste de Lazarque suggests that " Fordresse," in the lips of German girls, is "an alteration of faux-traitre, words which are often repeated in popular songs and stories."
Before leaving the ballad poetry of France, it may be well to draw attention to the vast number of songs of the army, and of songs about deserters. As in Russia, the conscription has greatly exercised the muse of the people. Another large class of ballads deals with the adventures of pretty shepherdesses, who get the better of adventurous knights. These songs may be derived from the pastourelles of the thirteenth century, of which Bartsch has published a collection; or ancient popular songs of this kind may have given the key-note to the artistic poets who brought pastourelles into fashion. Taking French ballads as a whole, counting rondes, lullabies, marriage-songs, and the songs of the labourers, one finds a good deal of babbling gaiety, some trace of dreary superstition, much love of the spring, and of the songs of birds, scattered memories of the oppression of the ancien régime, and, now and again, an accent of deeper melancholy and weariness of labour. Thus, in the labourer's song:—
Qu'il pleue, qu'il vente, qu'il neige,
Orage on autre temp,
On voit toujours sans cesse
Le laboureur aux champs.
Le pauvre laboureur
N'ayant que deux enfants
Les a mis à la charrue
A l'âge de dix ans.
(Mélusine, col. 458, 459.)
You must not ask this people for the rich sentiment or the patriotic war-song of the Greek mountaineer, for the tragedy that captivates the fancy, and the riding-song that stirs the blood, of the Scot,
