FRANCE, PROVENCE, NORTH ITALY, AND BRITTANY 139

historical matter. The oldest event recorded is to be found in The
Hanged Scholars. It is the foundation legend of the Hotel-Dieu
at Pontoise, built by St. Louis from the fine paid by Enguerrand
de Coucy in 1259; he hanged three scholars of St. Nicholas's
Abbey, Laon, who had hunted in his forest. The facts correspond
to those of a Dutch and German ballad, My Lord of Brunswick and
the little Boy, In the French ballad the crime is inspired by the
more convenient theme of amatory intrigue, as in our ballad of
The Clerk9s Two Sons of Oxenford (Child n). It is not certain at
what time the ballad arose, since the legend would always be
available at Pontoise. In some details, perhaps by chance, the piece
resembles the High German Castle in Austria, which is of the
fifteenth century. The word Pontoise was, in the course of tradi-
tion, replaced by Toulouse, and it is under this style that it spreads
to North Italy and Catalonia (Nigra 4 and Mila 208). Sometime
before the return of Francois I to Paris (iyth March 1526) from
his captivity in Madrid, a ballad was composed, not wholly in
his favour. It spread later to Italy, where the imprisonment of
Louis XVI seemed a sufficiently close analogue to justify the
change of names. It is one of several ballads inspired by the fight
at Pavia in the imagination of the contestants. The Spaniards
remember the victory in a prosy and circumstantial piece which
gives credit above all to Antonio de Leiva. To the Germans it
seemed rather an opportunity for exalting the prowess of the
landsknechts against their professional rivals, the Swiss pikemen;
their hero is Georg von Frundsberg. So, though one event has had
ballad consequences in different countries, Pavia illustrates the
truth that historical ballads seldom travel beyond the frontiers of a
single homogeneous ballad area. It is somewhat surprising, there-
fore, to encounter in Germany a version of the French Poisoned
Marchioness, complete with tune, which gives voice to the suspicion
that Henry IV's mistress Gabrielle d'Bstrees was poisoned in
1599. The English Marriage refers to Henrietta Maria's marriage
in 1625; but the celebrated Marlbrough s'en va en guerre, which
has spread to Germany, Italy, Catalonia, the Asturias, and
Portugal since 1781, has no more connexion with our general
than the name. The story is that his death was reported to his
faithful wife—which is the old plot of Belle Doette. The tune (a
singularly sprightly one) may have been used for a hunting song
in the seventeenth century* A comparison with other collections