i4S ROMANCE BALLADS

and even north of the Border, it is not possible to discern any
English influence on the formation of the Breton corpus. The
international matter preserved by Luzel contains some pious pieces
which have attained wide celebrity and can hardly be assigned with
assurance to any particular focus. There are those which reprove
Dives and his wife for their hardness of heart: The Famine (i, p.
76), The Poor Widow (i, p. 80, miraculously saved from killing her
children by the intervention of the Virgin), and The Two Sisters
(ii, p. 508). The innocent maiden who cannot be burned at the
stake appears in Anne Cozik (i, p. 218), and there is the apocryphal
miracle of the roasted capon which crew, associated with the name
of Marguerite Laurent (i, p. 210). Specifically French are the
poems entitled She who went to see her Mistress in Hell, Marivonnic
or death before dishonour, The Knight and Shepherdess and Robert
the Devil, the latter probably taken from a chapbook (i, pp. 45,
350, 194; ii, p. 24). So also are La petite Franfoise et le petit Pierre
(ii, p. 16), which is a version of King Loys7 Daughter, The Sarracens
—a variant of Escriveta—and probably also The Short Straw (ii,
pp. 20, 182). The Hallewijn theme appears under the title of
Rosmelchon and the Kudrun cycle as Brother and Sister (i, pp. 308,
202). Among the ballads of Scandinavian origin, the best known
is Count Nann (i, p. 5), which has already been discussed. The
text is fuller than that of France, since it contains the first part of
the complete ballad; the tune may also be of Danish origin. A very-
curious piece, The Tailor and the Dwarfs (i, p. 134), relates an
attempt to steal the dwarfs' treasure. The robber is compelled to
dance to death among them. Apart from the motive for the visit,
this resembles the Danish Elveskud and other ballads describing
the dances of trolls and elves, and it has no French equivalent.

2. Central and Southern Italy and Sicily

Central and Southern Italy are regions subject to the dominion
of a great artistic literature which has given masterpieces to the
world since the thirteenth century; in Sicily, while the dialectal
differences suffice to withdraw traditional verse from the over-
whelming supremacy of the Humanities, the poetry of the people
still takes its rise from the hendecasyllable of the cultured poets,
the authors call themselves *pueti', and indulge in a modest pride.
Some names, even, are known, and some details of their ingenuity
as practitioners. Their art is essentially lyrical. The art of Pied-