PREFACE

A MOROSE critic, with whom le pot-au-feu had probably disagreed, exclaimed one day, " Ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'étre dit on le chante." We would say at once, and in the frankest manner, that the present volume is intended as a protest against so gross a paradox. If ever there was a singing race of people, it is certainly the French : the lark, which in the days of Cæsar stood probably as the crest on the helmet of the Gallic soldiers,* was the aptest emblem of the whole nation; and from the time of Vercingetorix to that of His Majesty Napoleon III. the merry songster has never ceased sending forth its strains throughout the world. In giving here, however, a short account of the history of French chanson literature, I shall

*

"Qua fiducia, ad legiones quas a Republica acceperat, alias privato sumptu addidit. Unam etiam e Transalpinis conscriptam, vocabulo quoque Gallico (allauda enim appellabatur) quam disciplina, cultuque Romano institutam et ornatam, postea universam civitate donavit."-SUETON. Jul. Cæs. See also PLIN. lib. ii. сар. 371.

not go further back than the eleventh century. THEROULDE, it is said by most critics, was the author of the Chanson de Roland, which appears to have been speedily adopted as a kind of warsong; and Robert Wace informs us that at the battle of Hastings the Norman Taillefer

". . . . alloit chantant

De Carlemagne et de Rolant,

Et d'Olivier et des vassals

Qui périrent à Roncesvals."

Leaving altogether unnoticed the Troubadours and their admirable but short-lived literature,* we shall turn to the Northern Trouvères, whose fabliaux, disputes, and lais corresponded respectively to the sirventes, tensons, and cançons of their more brilliant and imaginative contemporaries of the pays de Languedoc. If religion found a ready, and sometimes an eloquent expression in some of the old poems, denunciations of social abuses were quite as plentiful, whilst they were frequently more remarkable from a literary point of view. Without looking into the tedious but often singularly bold tirades of the Roman de la Rose, let the curious reader just glance at some of the fabliaux collected by Méon and Barbazan; † let him take up the

* For an account of the Troubadours, see Raynouard's Choix des Poésies originales des Troubadours.

+ Fabliaux et Contes des Poètes Français. Nouv. édit. revue par MÉON. Paris:

BAZAN.

publiés par BAR1808. 8vo. 4 vols.