138 ROMANCE BALLADS

There is assonance in the alternate lines, and it Is a rule that the
cadences of the two lines making the couplet must be different (in
this case feminine endings, followed by masculine endings with
the rhyming word). Doncleux has preferred to arrange these
pieces, therefore, In long lines, so as to allow the assonances to
follow at the end of each long line, making a tirade. Nigra in
Piedmont and Mila y Fontanals in Catalonia have adopted the
same arrangement. The rule is then given that the hemistichs of
a traditional line must have different cadences. An appeal to music
shows that there are phrases for each line, which might justify the
arrangement adopted in the translation; but it also shows that these
songs have a different form as sung from that which they appear
to bear as read. La Perronnelle is sung as a quatrain, with musical
phrases arranged as ajSaa7. The use of nonsense refrains in the
dancing songs, and the repetition of the single lines or hemistichs,
gives to some pieces quite an elaborate stanzaic form as sung. The
almost equally popular La Pernette has a tune arranged as a££'a]8yj8;
the first line is sung, then the nonsense refrain, then the first
repeated, and the second sung three times over, using a different
musical phrase the second time.

Whether these poems be composed in long divided lines or in
couplets may be open to doubt; but they are in effect related as
couplets to the slightly later quatrain style. The quatrain is rarely
used for dancing, and is more appropriate for narrative. The
rhymes are frequently arranged in the simplest manner (aabb), and
the music in four phrases (a/JyS). This is the metre of Jean Renaud,
King Loys* Daughter, La Belle Barbiere, The Torch of Love, The
Drowned Diver, and other famous narrative songs, a notable pro-
portion of which must be considered importations into France
from Germany, the Netherlands, and even Scandinavia. A
genuinely French song, The Sheep saved from the Wolf (which is
one of the mocking 'pastourelles') arranges its rhymes alternately
(abab), and observes the rule as to change of cadence; this rule,
however, does not generally affect the poems in quatrains. There
is a tendency for poems in couplets to pass into quatrains, as one
may note In comparing La Perronnelle with its derivative Fanchon,
or the Girl and the Dragoon. Yet the couplet remained alive, and as
late as 1781 was the form taken by the highly popular song about
Marlborough.

The French Romancero, as arranged by Doncieux, is poor in