BOOK II
BALLADS IN PARTICULAR

I

ROMANCE BALLADS
i. France, Provence, North Italy, and Brittany

THE ballad in France is the narrative aspect of lyrical poetry.
It has no form of its own nor does it make a corpus to which
the word Romancero (borrowed from Spain) might justly be
applied. The narrative pieces merge into the more general
* chansons populates', from which, except when borrowing from
abroad has taken place, they are scarcely distinguishable. Lyrical
effusions arose from situations which were constantly repeated—
an encounter with a shepherdess, amorous intrigue, separation and
reunion—and these situations required some words of introduction.
They are not domestic and personal; they do not, as in Lithuania,
follow a girl through the ritual prescribed by custom for each stage
in her development. On the contrary, the matter of the f chanson
populaire' is the same set of conventions which occurs in the liter-
ate effusions of the troubadours and trouveres. Contact with
written songs is felt in all the folk-songs of France in a greater or
less degree; there is no possibility of setting a dividing line between
the literate and the oral What we possess of the latter is more
recent in date than the former, and we need not hesitate to suppose
that it is modelled on the conventions of the courtly poets. The
troubadours, however, had their antecedents, which are unknown
to us. About the year noo there was a quickening of the spirit
along the dividing line between the 'langue d'oc and the 'langue
d'oiT, and Provencal poetry burst into green leaf and full bloom.
The causes of this sudden efflorescence are still concealed. What
is certain is that the Provencal lyric appears at once with an
elaborate technique and equipment of conventions, far removed
from any poetry that might be called primitive. On the other
hand, long before uoo we read of the choric songs of rustic
women, either for mere entertainment or on some momentous
occasion, They perplexed the pious by their 'diabolic songs',
though doubtless innocent enough, from the sixth century