FRANCE, PROVENCE, NORTH ITALY, AND BRITTANY 145

to the words. The Piedmontese prosody is also that of France and
Provence, with the same characteristic alternance between mascu-
line and feminine endings in what may be described as either
couplets or long lines divided into hemistichs. The points of
difference are only of minor importance. The assonances are often
in e or e plus an unaccented vowel, as in French, but #', /, u, 6 are
also accepted in assonance as equivalents of e. The niceties of
prosody are also less scrupulously guarded. This impression may
arise in the mind partly owing to an accident of editorship, since
none of the French texts have been reproduced with the austerity
of the Italian editors; but it must also be due in part to the absence
of contact with literary models, since these employ the quite
different *lingua toscana'. It is possible to accept the greater
number as genuine traditional poems, without being perplexed by
semi-erudite elements. The line tends to be somewhat longer, as
the North Italian dialects have suffered less from the loss of final
vowels than French has done. The style also is more narrative.
In this matter we have to discount once more the preferences of the
modern editors, which have been normally lyrical in France and
epical in North Italy; but the mass is sufficiently large to justify
the observation.

In details we may sometimes note a closer connexion between
the Italian and some southern French redaction. Thus Marianson's
Rings (Nigra 6) take for hero Trinsi Raimund' and for villain the
'duca d'Ambo', while the scene is given as Lyons. The Hanged
Scholars is associated with Toulouse; and II Mora Saracino is an
offshoot of the Proven£al Escriveta. We may suppose also that
there would have been traffic in ballads between Genoa and Barce-
lona, such as would account for The Princess (Nigra 8), which is a
very short, dramatic equivalent of the Spanish Count Alarcos, the
Catalan Conde Floris. The Poisoned Man's Will (Nigra 26) is a
rendering of Lord Randal. A version encountered at Pisa by
Alessandro D'Ancona has the same form as the English ballad; in
others the metre has been accommodated to the pattern of the long
ballad line. Similarly, Ambrogio andLietta, the theme of the cruel
husband who compels his wife to travel fast while with child, stands
closer to Child Waters than to other forms of the same tale.

To distinguish what is original to Piedmont is more difficult,
and perhaps only Donna Lombarda can be referred to an Italian
minstrel without dubiety. The Italian versions of this piece are

4615