I Say A Book Might Be Written Upon It, And There Is No Doubt That A
Great Many Articles And Pamphlets Must Have Been Written Upon It, For
The French Are Furiously Given To Local Research And Reviews, And To
Glorifying Their Native Places:
And when they cannot discover folklore
they enrich their beloved homes by inventing it.
There was even a man (I forget his name) who wrote a delightful book
called _Popular and Traditional Songs of my Province,_ which book,
after he was dead, was discovered to be entirely his own invention,
and not a word of it familiar to the inhabitants of the soil. He was a
large, laughing man that smoked enormously, had great masses of hair,
and worked by night; also he delighted in the society of friends, and
talked continuously. I wish he had a statue somewhere, and that they
would pull down to make room for it any one of those useless bronzes
that are to be found even in the little villages, and that commemorate
solemn, whiskered men, pillars of the state. For surely this is the
habit of the true poet, and marks the vigour and recurrent origin of
poetry, that a man should get his head full of rhythms and catches,
and that they should jumble up somehow into short songs of his own.
What could more suggest (for instance) a whole troop of dancing words
and lovely thoughts than this refrain from the Tourdenoise -
... Son beau corps est en terre
Son ame en Paradis.
Tu ris?
Et ris, tu ris, ma Bergere,
Ris, ma Bergere, tu ris.
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