i4o	ROMANCE BALLADS
does not increase the historical content of French balladry, though
there are allusions in plenty to English ravages in our losing fight
to retain a hold on France in the fifteenth century. The death
of Olivier Basselin (c. 1450) and the misconduct of Louis XFs
garrisons (c. 1465) are also mentioned, and serve to confirm the
general period assigned to this later medieval phase of popular
poetry.
Doncieux prints seven religious pieces, but the bulk of his collec-
tion consists of amatory adventures, which can be grouped round
the name of the heroine. Some of these ascend to the fifteenth
century, and were then already welcomed by many. There is the
brief Perronnette, already mentioned, which was later transformed
into The Girl and the Dragoon. It is really a professional song of
the troops, like the late pieces, The Jolly Drummer and The
Soldier-Husband's Return. Sailors also have their ballads: The
Embarkation of the Singing Girl, The Corn Ship, and above all
The Short Straw. It would be convenient to place the origin of this
piece on the coasts of Normandy or Brittany, whence it would
radiate outward to Provence, Catalonia, and Portugal on the one
side, and to Scandinavia and England on the other. There seems,
however, to be no reason other than geographical probability for
placing this ballad to the credit of a French minstrel. Thackeray
has used it in his Little Billee, which one would reckon as a jocose
ballad of the period of decadence, despite the respectability of its
authorship. Similarly there is a professional element in La Belle
Barbiere, The Orange Girl, and The Orange Seller. Outside
Doncieux's collection we find a strong tendency to connect ballads
of the sixteenth century with the professions. The composer gives
his or her status by way of signature in the last verse. The practice
extended to Germany, and was normal in landsknecht and reiter
ballads which purport to convey information about contemporary
events. We have the ballad of Sickingen, for instance, on the
authority of a landsknecht who had just come (to somewhere
unnamed) from Landstuhl, after witnessing the hero's fall.
Ballads about prisoners, the Prisoners of Nantes and Pierre de
Grenoble, are, if not professional, at least of interest to a peculiar
social class.
There remain a few songs which deal ingenuously with love (Les
Princesses au Pommier doux and Claire Fontaine) or with lovers'
tragedies. In The Hapless Marriage, the lovers, separated by the