Mirèio

To Lamartine

Te consecre Mirèio: es moun cor e moun amo,
Es la flour de mis an.
Es un raisin de crau qu’emé touto sa ramo,
Te porge un païsan.

I offer thee Mirèio: it is my heart and spirit,
The blossom of my years.
A cluster of Crau grapes, with all the green leaves near it,
To thee a peasant bears.

Preface to the English Edition

Thirty odd years have come and gone since the curious litterateurs of Paris were excited and charmed by the apparition of Frédéric Mistral’s Mirèio. A pastoral poem in twelve cantos, composed in the dialect of the Bouches-du-Rhône, and first issued by an obscure bookseller at Avignon, it was produced before the great literary world with a parallel French version of the author’s own, very singular and rather sauvage as French, but exceedingly bold, picturesque, and poetic, and the poem had the further advantage of a most eloquent and sympathetic introduction in the Revue des Deux Mondes, of September 15, 1859, by Saint-René Taillandier.

The employment of a rustic southern dialect for the purposes of poetic narrative was by no means so unheard-of a thing, even to the men of that generation, as was indirectly assumed by the first reviewer of Mirèio. Had not Jacques Jasmin, the immortal barber of Agen, written, in his own local patois, “Françonette,” and “The Blind Girl of Castel Cuillé,” and the inimitable Papillotes? But the work of Mistral, along with that of the school which he claimed to represent, and of which he was easily chief, was heralded by a certain fanfare—it came with a specific and impressive claim of ancient Provençal traditions to be revived, and a vast future inaugurated: pretensions which would have seemed almost droll to the Gascon Jasmin, with his exquisite humour and his adorable simplicity.

I can do no more than glance in this place at the history of the self-styled Provençal Revival, the most ambitious and by far the most romantic literary adventure of our day. It is an inviting subject, and will one day form an interesting chapter in the long annals of poesy; but the time is not yet fully come for estimating its results, and still less, with its greatest champion yet living, for writing its obituary.

Joseph Roumanille, a schoolmaster of St. Rémy, near Tarascon, was the father of the movement. He first wrote poems in modern Provençal, so the pleasant legend says, because his old mother could not understand him when he essayed to read her those which he had written in French. Delighted, and, as it would seem, a little amazed at his own success, he came forward as the rightful heir to the long-lapsed inheritance of the Troubadours, assumed that the language, whose literary capacities he had rediscovered, was essentially the same as theirs, and contrived thoroughly to imbue with his own faith in its future a band of clever and ardent pupils, among whom, by the will of Heaven, there was one rare genius—Frédéric Mistral, and one wild enthusiast, who was, at the same time, an affluent and pathetic versifier—Théodore Aubanel. Animated by a mystical assurance, hardly less profound than that of Loyola and his companions upon Montmartre, these knights of song bound themselves by a sort of vow, to write in the effete language of the French Academy no more. They constituted themselves a poetic order, and proceeded to adopt an elaborate and somewhat fantastic organization. The almost religious earnestness which animated them may be judged by the fact that when one of the original band, Eugène Garcin—formally saluted by name, along with some half-dozen others, in the sixth canto of Mirèio—cooled in his ardour a little, and attempted to point out the factitious and impracticable side of the movement, he was solemnly denounced by Mistral as “the Judas of our little church.” It was a defection of no serious moment, and the revival went its fervid way without Garcin.

The Provençal poets agreed to call themselves felibre, nobody knows to this day exactly why. There are those who say that the word means homme de foi libre, that is, emancipated from all slavish literary tradition—as Mistral and his first associates undoubtedly were; there are sticklers for antiquity and a direct descent from the Latin, who maintain the derivation qui facit libros. Howbeit the felibre began to publish at Avignon in the speech of the district, a periodical, which still, I think, appears at irregular intervals. They constructed a small grammar on the lines of the existing grammars of the ancient Langue d’oc, especially of Raynouard’s Résumé de la Grammaire Romaine, and they began the compilation of an extensive dictionary, which has never even approached completion. They also revived the institution of an annual poetic tournament with floral prizes—a silver lily, a golden violet—where the native bards recited their verses, and received their rewards, after the supposed manner of the olden time. These jousts were usually held in the late summer or the early autumn. There were others appointed for the yet more appropriate month of May, which received the name of the feast of the Santo Estello, or Holy Star—memourativo de la reneissenço dou Gai-Sabe—to commemorate the renaissance of the Gay Science. Once in seven years this feast was to be celebrated with extraordinary splendour, “in honour” (I continue to quote from the address of Mistral at the Floral Games held at Hyères in 1885) “of the seven rays of that mysterious star which leads, whithersoever God will, our bark with its orange-freight.” That is to say, which determines, after the manner of the Star of Bethlehem, the place where our society shall assemble and listen to the pieces entered for competition.

Were it possible for a new language to be created, or a decaying one revived, of determinate purpose, by native genius, fiery enthusiasm and unstinted devotion to the cause, that miracle would surely have been wrought by the felibre of the Bouches-du-Rhône. But the triumph of a language, like that of the kingdom of heaven, is among the things which do not come by observation. It is determined by causes as vast as those which shape the continents, and quite as independent of the theories of individual men. The order of the Holy Star, was after all only a kind of idealized mutual admiration society, and of all its members during a full quarter of a century, three names only have advanced from local renown to anything like general recognition. They are the three names already cited of Roumanille, Aubanel, and Mistral.

The two former have already passed away, leaving behind them many charming lyrics, but no work of universal and lasting interest. Mistral is gloriously young at sixty, able, and let us hope willing, to give us in that rich and flowing idiom, which no one else has ever managed with such mastery as he, many more historical and narrative poems, vivid with local colour, and teeming with local tradition, like Calendau—a romance of the last century, which appeared in 1873 and Nerto—a tale of the time of the Popes at Avignon, published in 1884. But it is safe to prophesy that neither Mistral nor any other felibre will ever give us another Mirèio—so spontaneous, artless, and impassioned, so dewy with the memories of the poet’s own childhood on a Provençal farm, or mas, so gay with the laughter and moving with the tears of simple folk, reflecting in so flawless a mirror every change of the seasons, every aspect of the free, primitive, bucolic life of the Mediterranean shore.

The success of Aubanel was perhaps frustrated by the very extravagance of his own aims. When we find him at the fêtes of Forcalquier in 1875 apostrophizing the arbiters of literary renown in France in terms like these: “Sachez que nous sommes un grand peuple, et qu’il n’est plus temps de nous mépriser. Trente départements parlent notre langue, d’une mer à l’autre mer, des Pyrénées jusqu’aux Alpes, de Crau à Limousin; le même amour fait battre notre poitrine, l’amour de la terre natale et de la langue maternelle. … Sachez que vous serez tombés longtemps alors que le Provençal, toujours jeune, parlera encore de vous avec pitié”—we can then understand that Saint-René Tallandier, the original sponsor of Mirèio, should have made haste to express his grave apprehensions for the sanity of the revivalist movement, and to repudiate in the name of the great Review all countenance of so vast a pretension on behalf of an “idiom which had vanished for six hundred years from the battlefield of ideas.”

One is reminded of the lament of the late William Barnes that the dialect of Dorset had not prevailed in England over the tongue of Shakespeare. Yet William Barnes, like the felibre, wrote poems in the local patois, far more beautiful and pathetic than any which he ever produced in proper English.

Mistral himself, with the profounder instincts and wiser judgment of a really large mind, has grown more modest from year to year in his hopes concerning the final harvest of that generous enterprise to which his life and powers have been consecrated. He was not quite able to extend a hearty welcome to Alphonse Daudet, when that most humane and sympathetic of realists appeared upon the scene with Numa Roumestan and the Lettres de mon Moulin, describing in the most pellucid French and with a fidelity equal to his own, the prose aspect of the life of the South, and all the rustic scenes which Mistral had so affectionately poetized. All the felibre, indeed, looked askance at Daudet as an intruder, and this is one more sign, if not of the limitations of their leader’s genius, at least of the narrow and ephemeral character of their collective ideal. However, in an address delivered before the previously-mentioned assembly at Hyères in 1885—ten years after Aubanel had hurled his fierce defiance at the French Academy—Mistral might have been heard pleading, with much earnestness and good sense, that French and Provençal should be kept resolutely distinct, both in the teaching of the schools, and in the talk of the people, and that, by way of preserving the purity of both forms of speech.

His remarks had an especial appropriateness then and there, because the prose work crowned upon that occasion was a series of naive and highly dramatic dialogues, entitled Scènes de la Vie Provençale, by M. C. Sénès, of Toulon, officially known as La Sinse. French of the most barbaric, and Provençal of the most pliant, are mixed up in these delightfully comic dialogues exactly as they are upon the lips of the common folk. It is the most amusing, perhaps the only distinctly amusing work which the school of the felibre has ever produced, and anybody who reads French may read and have a hearty laugh over it. And I may add, from my own experience, that a very short residence in the ancient Provincia is enough to show that the local idiom is much more intelligible phonetically than it looks at first sight upon paper.

I may be mistaken, but I take the truth to be that modern Provençal is, after all, a dialect only, and not, as was so long and passionately claimed by the confederate poets, a language. As a matter of fact, it resembles the plastic idiom of the ancient Troubadours very little more than it resembles modern French, and certainly no more than it resembles Gascon, Catalan, or the Italian of the Western Riviera. All the Romance dialects, however fallen from literary honour, or untamed by literary law, are closely akin, and bear marks, even in their utmost degradation, of the same illustrious pedigree. They are like certain wild flowers, the pimpernel, the anemone, whose species can never be mistaken, but whose colours present, and that spontaneously, an almost infinite variety.

The poem of Mirèio, in parallel French and Provençal, first fell in my way in the summer of 1871; and I admire my own audacity in immediately attempting to turn it into English verse,1 almost as much as I do that of the men who first preached the Provençal crusade against the language of Racine and Molière. Of course I knew no more of the idiom in which it was originally composed than could be gathered from a close comparison of the same with Mistral’s own French, aided by a smattering of old Provençal. I may plead in extenuation of my effrontery that there was virtually no more to be known at that time, for even the grammar already mentioned had not then been published. There is not very much more to be known even now.

The scheme of the Provençal verse, though elaborate, and seemingly very artificial, was easily enough intelligible to an English ear; more so, I should fancy, than to a Parisian one, on account of its obvious jingle—or, to speak by the book, the exuberance of its rhymes, and the strength of its tonic accents. The same remark, as is well known, applies in a general way to the songs of the Troubadours. Mistral’s stanza consists of five eight-syllabled iambic lines with feminine rhymes, in groups of two and three, and two twelve-syllabled iambic lines, with masculine rhymes. The Quaker poet Whittier had fallen upon a somewhat similar verse, in one of the finest of his earlier poems—“Lines Written at Hampton Beach”:—

“So when Time’s veil shall fall asunder,
The soul may know
No sudden change, no curious wonder,
Nor sink the weight of mystery under,
But with the upward rise, and with the vastness grow.”

But this is far simpler than Mistral’s.

I did actually make an attempt to transfer this florid measure to our own sober English tongue, and that eminent American poet and very distinguished connoisseur in poetic metres, the late Mr. Longfellow, once told me that he greatly wished I had persevered, and that he thought it would have been quite possible to render the whole poem in the same way. Perhaps it would have been, to a master of versification, like himself; and for his sake, and out of respect for his opinion, I subjoin the opening stanzas of the poem in Provençal, and my own attempt to imitate their metre, premising, for the benefit of the unskilled, that in Provençal every letter sounds, the vowels as in French, while of the consonants g and j before e and i are pronounced like ds, and ch always like ts. A final vowel is elided, in scanning, before another vowel; and the tonic accent is strongly marked:—

“Cante uno chato de Prouvènço,
Dins lis amour de la jouvènço,
A travès da la Crau, vers la mar, dins li bla,
Umble escoulan d’ou grand Oumero,
Iéu la vole segui. Coume èro
Rèn qu’uno chato de Prouvènço,
En foro de la Crau se n’es gaire parla.

Emai soun front noun lusiguèsse
Que de jouinesso; emai n’agùesse
Ni diadèmo d’or ni mantèu de Damas,
Vole qu’en glòri fugue aussado
Coune uno rèino, e caressado
Pèr nosto lengo mespresado
Car cantan que pèr vautre, o pastre e gènt di mas!”

Or thus:—

“A maiden of Provence I sing:
I tell the love-tale of her spring,
Across La Crau’s wide wheat-fields follow her to the sea.
Mine be the daring aspiration
To sing of her in Homer’s fashion,
My lady of the lowly station,
Unknown beyond the prairies of lone La Crau was she.

What though her brow was never crowned
Save with the youth that rayed it round?
What though she bore no golden crown and wore no damask cloak?
Yet I would have her raised in glory
As a queen is, and set before me
In our poor speech to tell her story,
Because I sing for you alone, shepherds and farmer-folk!”

To me the thought of keeping this up for twelve cantos was simply appalling. Even in my trial stanzas, as will be seen, I had sacrificed many of the feminine rhymes; and I am now inclined to think, though I speak under correction, that Mistral himself and his followers availed themselves pretty liberally of the license which the classic Troubadours are well known to have employed, of manipulating their final syllables more or less in order to make them rhyme.

The measure finally adopted—ten-syllabled iambic lines with consecutive rhymes, usually masculine but sometimes feminine—was essentially the same as that employed by William Morris in the Earthly Paradise. That beautiful work was then new, and very popular in America, and it seemed, and I own that to me it seems still, to present almost the ideal of English narrative poetry. But I broke my version into stanzas of six lines, by way, I suppose, of making it look more like the original.

In those comparatively early days, I also held, and rather doted on, a theory of my own about what are called imperfect rhymes. I was persuaded that rhymes where the consonant sounds correspond while the vowel sounds merely approximate—like wreck and make, gone and son—are the counterpart on the one hand of assonances upon the other, in which the vowels correspond but not the consonants; that their relation to perfect rhymes is exactly that of minor to major harmonies, and that they relieve the ear in a long-rhymed poem, no less than the latter in a musical composition. Though very naturally censured for the freedom with which I exercised this caprice in my version of Mirèio, I still clung to it tenaciously as late as 1880, when I made a version of the Georgics of Virgil. I am by no means certain even now that there is not sound musical justification for the idea, but I have grown conservative with years, as we are all apt to do, and I cherish an ever-increasing respect for law—literary and other. In the present edition of my Mirèio, I have therefore reformed and, so to speak, ranged some scores of these licentious rhymes, aiming always, at the same time, at coming closer to the meaning of the original, as I now understand it, even if need be, at the sacrifice of some picturesqueness in the English line.

I had always beside me when I first made my version, the English prose translation of Mirèio, by Mr. C. H. Grant, to which I feel myself to have been not a little indebted. In artlessness of narrative, in vigour and felicity of expression, I have never hoped to surpass this unrhymed and unmeasured version, which needed, as it seemed to me, only a rhythmic form to render it worthy of the essentially musical original.

A second English translation, by H. Crichton, with which I became acquainted subsequently, had been published by Macmillan and Co., London, in 1868. This version was a metrical one, and fairly close, but it failed, I think, in catching, not the music merely, but the rural freshness and fragrance, the genuinely bucolic spirit of the Provençal. It is because, I venture to hope, that my version, with all its faults, does reflect something of all this, that a new edition of it is offered to the public after so long a time.

Canto I

Lotus2 Farm

I sing the love of a Provençal maid;
How through the wheat-fields of La Crau3 she strayed,
Following the fate that drew her to the sea.
Unknown beyond remote La Crau was she;
And I, who tell the rustic tale of her,
Would fain be Homer’s humble follower.

What though youth’s aureóle was her only crown?
And never gold she wore nor damask gown?
I’ll build her up a throne out of my song,
And hail her queen in our despisèd tongue.
Mine be the simple speech that ye all know,
Shepherds and farmer-folk of lone La Crau.

God of my country, who didst have Thy birth
Among poor shepherds when Thou wast on earth,
Breathe fire into my song! Thou knowest, my God,
How, when the lusty summer is abroad,
And figs turn ripe in sun and dew, comes he—
Brute, greedy man—and quite despoils the tree.

Yet on that ravaged tree thou savest oft
Some little branch inviolate aloft,
Tender and airy up against the blue,
Which the rude spoiler cannot win unto:
Only the birds shall come and banquet there,
When, at St. Magdalene’s, the fruit is fair.

Methinks I see yon airy little bough:
It mocks me with its freshness even now;
The light breeze lifts it, and it waves on high
Fruitage and foliage that cannot die.
Help me, dear God, on our Provençal speech,
To soar until the birds’ own home I reach!

Once, then, beside the poplar-bordered Rhône,
There lived a basket-weaver and his son,
In a poor hut set round with willow-trees
(For all their humble wares were made from these);
And sometimes they from farm to farm would wend,
And horses’ cribs and broken baskets mend.

And so one evening, as they trudged their round
With osier bundles on their shoulders bound,
“Father,” young Vincen said, “the clouds look wild
About old Magalouno’s4 tower up-piled.
If that gray rampart fell, ’twould do us harm:
We should be drenched ere we had gained the farm.”

“Nay, nay!” the old man said, “no rain to-night!
’Tis the sea-breeze that shakes the trees. All right!
A western gale were different.” Vincen mused:
“Are many ploughs at Lotus farmstead used?”
“Six ploughs!” the basket-weaver answered slow:
“It is the finest freehold in La Crau.

“Look! There’s their olive-orchard, intermixt
With rows of vines and almond-trees betwixt.
The beauty of it is, that vineyard hath
For every day in all the year a path!
There’s ne’er another such the beauty is;
And in each path are just so many trees.”

“O heavens! How many hands at harvest-tide
So many trees must need!” young Vincen cried.
“Nay: for ’tis almost Hallowmas, you know,
When all the girls come flocking in from Baux,5
And, singing, heap with olives green and dun
The sheets6 and sacks, and call it only fun.”

The sun was sinking, as old Ambroi said;
On high were little clouds a-flush with red;
Sideways upon their yokèd cattle rode
The labourers slowly home, each with his goad
Erect. Night darkened on the distant moor;
’Twas supper-time, the day of toil was o’er.

“And here we are!” the boy cried. “I can see
The straw-heaped threshing-floor, so hasten we!”
“But stay!” the other. “Now, as I’m alive,
The Lotus Farm’s the place for sheep to thrive—
The pine-woods all the summer, and the sweep
Of the great plain in winter. Lucky sheep!

“And look at the great trees that shade the dwelling,
And look at that delicious stream forth welling
Inside the vivary! And mark the bees!
Autumn makes havoc in their colonies;
But every year, when comes the bright May weather,
Yon lotus-grove a hundred swarms will gather.”

“And one thing more!” cried Vincen, eagerly,
“The very best of all, it seems to me—
I mean the maiden, father, who dwells here.
Thou canst not have forgotten how, last year,
She bade us bring her olive-baskets two,
And fit her little one with handles new.”

So saying, they drew the farm-house door anigh,
And, in the dewy twilight, saw thereby
The maid herself. Distaff in hand she stood,
Watching her silkworms at their leafy food.
Then master Ambroi let his osiers fall,
And sang out cheerily, “Good-even, all!”

“Father, the same to you!” the damsel said.
“I had come out my distaff-point to thread,
It grows so dark. Whence come you now, I pray?
From Valabrègo?”7 Ambroi answered, “Yea.
I said, when the fast-coming dark I saw,
‘We’ll sleep at Lotus Farm upon the straw.’ ”

Whereat, with no more words, father and son
Hard by upon a roller sat them down,
And fell to their own work right busily.
A half-made cradle chanced the same to be.
Fast through the nimble fingers of the two
The supple osier bent and crossed and flew.

Certes, our Vincen was a comely lad.
A bright face and a manly form he had,
Albeit that summer he was bare sixteen.
Swart were his cheeks; but the dark soil, I ween,
Bears the fine wheat, and black grapes make the wine
That sets our feet a-dance, our eyes a-shine.

Full well he knew the osier to prepare,
And deftly wrought: but ofttimes to his share
Fell coarser work; for he the panniers made
Wherewith the farmers use their beasts to lade,
And divers kinds of baskets, huge and rough,
Handy and light. Ay, he had skill enough!

And likewise brooms of millet-grass, and such—
And baskets of split-cane. And still his touch
Was sure and swift; and all his wares were strong,
And found a ready sale the farms among.
But now, from fallow field and moorland vast,
The labourers were trooping home at last.

Then hasted sweet Mirèio to prepare,
With her own hands and in the open air,
Their evening meal. There was a broad flat stone
Served for a table, and she set thereon
One mighty dish, where each man plunged his ladle.
Our weavers wrought meanwhile upon their cradle.

Until Ramoun, the master of the farm,
Cried, “How is this?”—brusque was his tone and warm.
“Come to your supper, Ambroi: no declining!
Put up the crib, my man: the stars are shining.
And thou, Mirèio, run and fetch a bowl:
The travellers must be weary, on my soul!”

Wherefore the basket-weaver, well-content,
Rose with his son and to the table went,
And sat him down and cut the bread for both;
While bright Mirèio hasted, nothing loth,
Seasoned a dish of beans with olive oil,
And came and sat before them with a smile.

Not quite fifteen was this same fair Mirèio.
Ah, me! the purple coast of Font Vièio,8
The hills of Baux, the desolate Crau plain,
A shape like hers will hardly see again.
Child of the merry sun, her dimpled face
Bloomed into laughter with ingenious grace.

Eyes had she limpid as the drops of dew;
And, when she fixed their tender gaze on you,
Sorrow was not. Stars in a summer night
Are not more softly, innocently bright:
And beauteous hair, all waves and rings of jet;
And breasts, a double peach, scarce ripened yet.

Shy, yet a joyous little sprite she was;
And, finding all her sweetness in a glass,
You would have drained it at a single breath.
But to our tale, which somewhat lingereth.
When every man his day’s toil had rehearsed
(So, at my father’s farm, I heard them first)—

“Now, Ambroi, for a song!” they all began:
“Let us not sleep above our supper, man!”
But he, “Peace! peace! My friends, do ye not know
On every jester, God, they say, doth blow
And sets him spinning like a top along?
Sing yourselves, lads—you who are young and strong.”

“No jest, good father, none!” they answered him.
“But, since the wine o’erflows your goblet’s brim,
Drink with us, Ambroi, and then to your song!”
“Ay, ay, when I was young—but that was long
Ago—I’d sing to any man’s desire;
But now my voice is but a broken lyre.”

“But, Master Ambroi,” urged Mirèio,
“Sing one song, please, because ’twill cheer us so.”
“My pretty one,” the weaver said again,
“Only the husks of my old voice remain;
But if these please you, I cannot say nay,”
And drained his goblet, and began straightway:—

I

Our Captain was Bailly Suffren;
We had sailed from Toulon,
Five hundred sea-faring Provençaux,
Stout-hearted and strong:
’Twas the sweet hope of meeting the English that made our hearts burn,
And till we had thrashed them we vowed we would never return.

II

But all the first month of our cruise
We saw never a thing
From the shrouds, save hundreds and hundreds
Of gulls on the wing;
And in the next dolorous month, we’d a tempest to fight,
And had to be bailing out water by day and by night.

III

By the third, we were driven to madness
At meeting no foe
For our thundering cannon to sweep
From the ocean. When lo!
“Hands aloft!” Captain cried. At the maintop one heard the command,
And the long Arab coast on the lee-bow intently he scanned.

IV

Till, “God’s thunder!” he cried. “Three big vessels
Bear down on us strong;
Run the guns to the ports! Blaze away!”
Shouted Bailly Suffren.
“Sharp’s the word, gallant lads! Our figs of Antibes they shall test,
And see how they like those,” Captain said, “ere we offer the rest!”

V

A crash fit to deafen! Before
The words left his lips
We had sent forty balls through the hulls
Of the Englishers’ ships!
One was done for already. And now the guns only heard we,
The cracking of wood and perpetual groan of the sea.

VI

And now we were closing. Oh, rapture!
We lay alongside,
Our gallant commander stood cool
On the deck, and he cried,
“Well done, my brave boys! But enough! Cease your firing, I say,
For the time has come now to anoint them with oil of Aix.”

VII

Then we sprang to our dirks and our hatchets,
As they had been toys;
And, grapnel in hand, the Provençal
Cried, “Board ’em, my boys!”
A shout and a leap, and we stood on the Englishers’ deck;
And then, ah, ’twas then we were ready our vengeance to wreak!

VIII

Then, oh, the great slaughter! The crash
Of the mainmast ensuing!
And the blows and the turmoil of men
Fighting on ’mid the ruin!
More than one wild Provençal I saw seize a foe in his place,
And hug till he strained his own life out in deadly embrace.

And then old Ambroi paused. “Ah, yes!” said he,
“You do not quite believe my tale, I see.
Nathless these things all happened, understand:
Did I not hold the tiller with this hand?
Were I to live a thousand years, I say,
I should remember what befell that day.”

“What, father, you were there and saw the fun?”
The labourers cried in mischief. “Three to one,
They flattened you like scythes beneath the hammer!”
“Who, me? The English?” the old tar ’gan stammer,
Upspringing; then, with smile of fine disdain,
Took up the burden of his tale again:—

IX

So with blood-dabbled feet fought we on
Four hours, until dark.
Then, our eyes being cleared of the powder,
We missed from our bark
Fivescore men. But the king of the English lost ships of renown:
Three good vessels with all hands on board to the bottom went down.

X

And now, our sides riddled with shot,
Once more homeward hie we,
Yards splintered, mast shivered, sails tattered;
But brave Captain Bailly
Spake us words of good cheer. “My comrades, ye have done well!
To the great king of Paris the tale of your valour I’ll tell!”

XI

“Well said, Captain dear!” we replied:
“Sure the king will hear you
When you speak. But for us, his poor mariners,
What will he do—
Who left our all gladly, our homes and our firesides,” we said,
“For his sake, and lo! now in those homes there is crying for bread?

XII

“Ah, Admiral, never forget
When all bow before you,
With a love like the love of your seamen
None will adore you!
Why, say but the word, and, ere homeward our footsteps we turn,
Aloft on the tips of our fingers a king you are borne!”

XIII

A Martigau,9 mending his nets
One eve, made this ditty.
Our admiral bade us farewell,
And sought the great city.
Were they wroth with his glory up there at the court? Who can say?
But we saw our beloved commander no more from that day!

A timely ending thus the minstrel made,
Else the fast-coming tears his tale had stayed;
But for the labourers—they sat intent,
Mute all, with parted lips, and forward bent
As if enchanted. Even when he was done,
For a brief space they seemed to hearken on.

“And such were aye the songs,” said the old man,
“Sung in the good old days when Martha span.10
Long-winded, maybe, and the tunes were queer.
But, youngsters, what of that? They suit my ear.
Your new French airs mayhap may finer be;
But no one understands the words, you see!”

Whereon the men, somewhat as in a dream,
From table rose, and to the running stream
They led their patient mules, six yoke in all.
The long vine-branches from a trellised wall
Waved o’er them waiting, and, from time to time,
Humming some fragment of the weaver’s rhyme.

Mirèio tarried, but not quite alone.
A social spirit had the little one,
And she and Vincen chatted happily.
’Twas a fair sight, the two young heads to see
Meeting and parting, coming still and going
Like aster-flowers11 when merry winds are blowing.

“Now tell me, Vincen,” thus Mirèio,
“If oftentimes as you and Ambroi go
Bearing your burdens the wild country over,
Some haunted castle you do not discover,
Or joyous fête, or shining palace meet,
While the home-nest is evermore our seat.”

“ ’Tis even so, my lady, as you think.
Why, currants quench the thirst as well as drink!
What though we brave all weathers in our toil?
Sure, we have joys that rain-drops cannot spoil
The sun of noon beats fiercely on the head,
But there are wayside trees unnumberèd.

“And whenso’er return the summer hours,
And olive-trees are all bedecked with flowers,
We hunt the whitening orchards curiously,
Still following the scent, till we descry
In the hot noontide, by its emerald flash,
The tiny cantharis upon the ash.

“The shops will buy the same. Or off we tramp
And gather red-oak apples in the swamp,12
Or beat the pond for leeches. Ah, that’s grand!
You need nor bait nor hook, but only stand
And strike the water, and then one by one
They come and seize your legs, and all is done.

“And thou wert never at Li Santo13 even!
Dear heart! The singing there must be like heaven.
’Tis there they bring the sick from all about
For healing; and the church is small, no doubt:
But, ah, what cries they lift! what vows they pay
To the great saints! We saw it one fête-day.

“It was the year of the great miracle.
My God, that was a sight! I mind it well.
A feeble boy, beautiful as Saint John,
Lay on the pavement, sadly calling on
The saints to give sight to his poor blind eyes,
And promising his pet lamb in sacrifice.

“ ‘My little lamb, with budding horns!’ he said,
‘Dear saints!’ How we all wept! Then from o’erhead
The blessed reliquaries14 came down slowly,
Above the throngèd people bending lowly,
And crying, ‘Come, great saints, mighty and good!
Come, save!’ The church was like a wind-swept wood.

“Then the godmother held the child aloft,
Who spread abroad his fingers pale and soft,
And passionately grasped the reliquaries
That held the bones of the three blessed Maries;
Just as a drowning man, who cannot swim,
Will clutch a plank the sea upheaves to him.

“And then, oh! then—I saw it with these eyes—
By faith illumined, the blind boy outcries,
‘I see the sacred relics, and I see
Grandmother all in tears! Now haste,’ said he,
‘My lambkin with the budding horns to bring
To the dear saints for a thank-offering!’

“But thou, my lady, God keep thee, I pray,
Handsome and happy as thou art to-day!
Yet if a lizard, wolf, or horrid snake
Ever should wound thee with its fang, betake
Thyself forthwith to the most holy saints,
Who cure all ills and hearken all complaints.”

So the hours of the summer evening passed.
Hard-by the big-wheeled cart its shadow cast
On the white yard. Afar arose and fell
The frequent tinkle of a little bell
In the dark marsh: a nightingale sang yonder;
An owl made dreamy, sorrowful rejoinder.

“Now, since the night is moonlit, so the mere
And trees are glorified, wilt thou not hear,”
The boy besought, “the story of a race
In which I hoped to win the prize?”—“Ah, yes!”
The little maiden sighed; and, more than glad,
Still gazed with parted lips upon the lad.

“Well, then, Mirèio, once at Nismes,” he said,
“They had foot-races on the esplanade;
And on a certain day a crowd was there
Collected, thicker than a shock of hair.
Some shoeless, coatless, hatless, were to run:
The others only came to see the fun.

“When all at once upon the scene appears
One Lagalanto, prince of foot-racers.
In all Provence, and even in Italy,
The fleetest-footed far behind left he.
Yes: Lagalanto, the great Marseillais—
Thou wilt have heard his name before to-day.

“A leg, a thigh, he had would not look small
By John of Cossa’s,15 the great seneschal;
And in his dresser many a pewter plate,
With all his victories carved thereon in state;
And you’d have said, to see his scarfs, my lady,
A wainscot all festooned with rainbows had he.

“The other runners, of whate’er condition,
Threw on their clothes at this dread apparition:
The game was up when Lagalanto came.
Only one stout-limbed lad, Lou Cri by name,
Who into Nismes had driven cows that day,
Durst challenge the victorious Marseillais.

“Whereon, ‘Oh, bah!’ cried foolish little I
(Just think!—I only chanced to stand thereby),
‘I can run too!’ Forthwith they all surround me:
‘Run, then!’ Alas! my foolish words confound me;
For I had run with partridges alone,
And only the old oaks for lookers-on.

“But now was no escape. ‘My poor boy, hasten,’
Says Lagalanto, ‘and your latchets fasten.’
Well, so I did. And the great man meanwhile
Drew o’er his mighty muscles, with a smile,
A pair of silken hose, whereto were sewn
Ten tiny golden bells of sweetest tone.

“So ’twas we three. Each set between his teeth
A bit of willow, thus to save his breath;
Shook hands all round; then, one foot on the line,
Trembling and eager we await the sign
For starting. It is given. Off we fly;
We scour the plain like mad—’tis you! ’tis I!

“Wrapped in a cloud of dust, with smoking hair,
We strain each nerve. Ah, what a race was there!
They thought we should have won the goal abreast,
Till I, presumptuous, sprang before the rest:
And that was my undoing; for I dropped
Pale, dying as it seemed. But never stopped

“The others. On, on, on, with steady gait,
Just like the pasteboard horses16 at Aix fête.
The famous Marseillais thought he must win
(They used to say of him he had no spleen);
But, ah! my lady, on that day of days,
He found his man—Lou Cri of Mouriès.

“For now they pass beyond the gazing line,
And almost touch the goal. O beauty mine!
Couldst thou have seen Lou Cri leap forward then!
Never, I think, in mountain, park, or glen,
A stag, a hare, so fleet of foot you’d find.
Howled like a wolf the other, just behind.

“Lou Cri is victor!—hugs the post for joy.
Then all of Nismes comes flocking round the boy,
To learn the birthplace of this wondrous one.
The pewter plate is flashing in the sun,
The hautboys flourish, cymbals clang apace,
As he receives the guerdon of the race.”

“And Lagalanto?” asks Mirèio.
“Why, he upon the ground was sitting low,
Powdered with dust, the shifting folk among,
Clasping his knees. With shame his soul was wrung
And, with the drops that from his forehead fell,
Came tears of bitterness unspeakable.

“Lou Cri approached, and made a modest bow.
‘Brother, let’s to the ale-house arbour now,
Behind the amphitheatre. Why borrow,
Upon this festive day, tears for the morrow?
The money left we’ll drink together thus:
There’s sunshine yet enough for both of us.’

“Then trembling rose the runner of Marseilles,
And from his limbs made haste to tear away
The silken hose, the golden bells. ‘Here, lad!’
Raising his pallid face, ‘take them!’ he said.
‘I am grown old; youth decks thee like a swan;
So put the strong man’s gear with honour on.’

“He turned, stricken like an ash the storm bereaves
In summer-time of all its tower of leaves.
The king of runners vanished from the place;
And never more ran he in any race,
Nor even leaped on the inflated hide,
In games at Saint John’s or St. Peter’s tide.”

So Vincen told the story, waxing warm,
Of all he’d seen, before the Lotus Farm.
His cheeks grew red, his eyes were full of light;
He waved his hand to point his speech aright—
Abundant was the same as showers in May
That fall upon a field of new-mown hay.

The crickets, chirruping amid the dew,
Paused more than once to listen. Often, too,
The bird of evening, the sweet nightingale,
Kept silence; thrilling so at Vincen’s tale,
As aye she harked her leafy perch upon,
She might have kept awake until the dawn.

“Oh, mother!” cried Mirèio, “surely never
Was weaver-lad so marvellously clever!
I love to sleep, dear, on a winter night;
But now I cannot—it is all too light.
Ah, just one story more before we go,
For I could pass a lifetime listening so!”