The little town of Verdun sur le Doubs has no particular attraction for the archÆologist nor for the tourist, yet it is a place with which all visitors to Beaune who wish to keep themselves in touch with the real Burgundy, with the life of the village and the ville de Canton, as well as with the larger movements of the great cities, cannot afford to neglect.

For myself, the little town will always be associated with happy souvenirs, and with gracious pictures of country life, as it has been since first I rode there, on a warm September afternoon, along a pleasant, undulating road, through typical, low-lying lands of fertile Burgundy, sometimes running quite straight for several kilometres, sometimes curving slightly through golden vineyards, and fields of bearded maize, and crimson clover. I passed through St. Loup, a village with a delightful Romanesque church, and through other attractive hamlets crowned with Gothic towers; by hay fields, where a late second crop was being taken in, by rich arable lands, where yoked oxen were ploughing with attendant women clearing the way for the plough-share with a stick. I passed patches of fragrant wild flowers, and ill weeds growing in tangled masses by the road side, by rich grasses that lean cattle were stolidly munching.

One of the boys who looked after them was singing a song. I could not catch the words exactly, nor the air, but I fitted the snatch of melody to the best of all Burgundian folk-songs, an exquisite little poem with a curious and very pretty history, that I am going to tell. This is the song. It is sung to-day, with local variations, not by the shepherds of Burgundy only, but throughout all France almost; in DauphinÉ, in Champagne, in the lonely forests of the Ardennes.

The French is so simple that, though I have appended no translation, nearly all my readers will be able to feel some of the charm and lilt of the original.

Generally speaking, of course, a folk song is not the work of one individual, but of many; it is essentially a local product, that grows with the years, and reflects truly the spirit of the land which gave it birth. Yet, strangely enough, this particular song, though it has all the virtues of its kind—the simplicity, the melody, the descriptive, pastoral, and amorous characteristics of a semi-southern race—is an exception to the general rule.

When it first appeared, in 1840, in the Burgundian section of an important work, "Les FranÇais peint par eux-mÊmes," the whole French nation welcomed it as one of the best of its kind; and other provinces, as I have said, did not hesitate to adopt it. It was held to be one of the most naive, and authentically popular songs of all Burgundy,—Burgundy itself, even, had no doubt whatever upon the subject. It was discussed everywhere in literary circles; and that eminent writer, M. Catulle MendÈs, one evening, in the presence of many other French litÉrateurs, openly expressed the opinion that it was written by a young Burgundian shepherd, very much in love. Then a strange thing happened. One of the oldest men present, the Burgundian poet, M. FranÇois Fertiault, walked up to MendÈs, and said, with a smile: "Eh, bien Monsieur, then I am that young Burgundian shepherd."

All the world wondered. The thing was impossible! It was not impossible; it was true. Indeed, rightly regarded, it was simple, and natural. M. Fertiault, living among the peasants and loving them, had absorbed all that of which the folk song is born. The poetic spirit of a rural people had, indeed, passed into him. What he had heard sung within him, he wrote. M. Fertiault, still hale and hearty, after ninety seven years of active life, told us the story himself, in his library, in the Rue Clausel, at Paris.

"I had to get material for this work," he said; "And though, for a dance song, I had ready a BourrÉe Charollaise, and for a religious song, one of De La Monnoye's Noels Bourguignons, I could find no example of the Chanson, properly so called; nothing, nothing at all, that was complete enough to be representative. The first part of my article was already published; the remainder must go to press. What could I do? Then an idea came to me. Only to attempt to carry it out was absurd. A minute later the attempt seemed to be audacious; then merely bold; then perfectly possible. Soon I knew that I must do it. The idea was growing in my brain. I felt something at work here (tapping his forehead), something alive. I could see my country; I could see my peasants. I was listening, listening. It all came to me—an impression straight from life, with the scent of the fields in it. I heard couplets, and a refrain. Yes, through the sweetness of the dream, came a song. I heard words and music.

For the words it was simple enough; but what to do for the tune? Technically I was ignorant of music; I could not read the hieroglyphics that are the language of Gounod and Rossini. I thought. Then I remembered Scheffer; he knew of my search for a song. He would understand. It was nearly eleven at night. With a feverish hand I was knocking at Scheffer's door.

"You are not in bed?"

"Not yet; but it's about time."

"Are you sleepy?"

"I could be—if I liked."

"In that case, let me come in." My friendly neighbour opened wide the door of his room. I hurried in.

"What is it?" said he, briskly.

"I have got my Burgundian song," said I, with an air of triumph.

"Bravo! Where did you unearth it?"

"I didn't. I made it. And as it needs you, here it is." Scheffer stood in unspeakable astonishment. I told him my story. Then I added: "My crime is double,—the air came to me with the words." My neighbour's eyes opened wide. He thought me very mad indeed. "And," I added, "musician that I am, I bring you my air; I can hear it buzzing in my head; but my throat will not translate it properly."

"What shall we do?" said he.

"I will hum it over to you, and we will piece it together on the piano."

"Bon. J'y suis. And together it was done—well done. We kept silence. The next day the compositors were busy; and soon everyone was reading the Burgundian Folk-Song, 'Eho.' I had succeeded." Now you understand why one remembers a dÉjeuner with FranÇois Fertiault.[191]

Here we are at the shining SaÔne, crossed by a suspension bridge that rocks under the weight of every carriage we meet; and here, at the end of the long avenue of poplars, beside the junction of the two rivers, is Verdun sur-le-Doubs.

Now that we are here I do not know that I have much to say about the town itself, except that it is a peaceful little place, lying snugly beside its waters that flow over golden sands.[192] In the 14th century, however, Verdun was a bonne ville fermÉe, one of the most ancient baronies of Burgundy, with fortress, fairs, markets, fiefs, vassals, and all the other appointments of a mediÆval town; but the tides of war, sweeping, time after time, over this part of the country, have left not even a ruin to remind us of its past.

Yet some incidents of that past are worth remembering; notably the siege of 1350, following on a disastrous war between the Sieurs de Viennes and the Seigneurs de Verdun, and again, in 1477 and 1478, when the Verdunois, always prominent in their adherence to the Burgundian cause, refused to accept the merger of their province into Louis XI.'s great kingdom of France.

But the most memorable of all the bloody scenes in which Verdun has played a part, was the great struggle of 1592, when the little town, the strongest holding for Henry IV. in all Burgundy, sustained a desperate attack under the Ligueurs, commanded by the Vicomte de Tavannes. At the head of the Verdunois was HÉliodore de Thiard de Bissy, and his brave wife, Marguerite de Busseul-Saint-Sernin, who, to sustain the courage of the defenders, voluntarily shared the fatigues and dangers of the fight.

She took upon herself the duty of distributing, with her own hands, powder and ammunition to her soldiers; until a spark set light to the barrels, and the brave girl, blown to pieces, met a warrior's death. Young, beautiful, generous, intrepid, and of noble birth, though she was, her heroic deed, by some strange caprice of destiny, has not rescued her name from oblivion.

But the thoughts uppermost in my mind, in connection with Verdun, are not historical, nor are they archÆological. They hover rather about rural Burgundy; the folk-lore, the old superstitions, and the intimate life of the peasants, such as that of which M. Fertiault has made such good use in his charming little story "The First of March."

Every year on the last day of February, when they think it will soon be midnight, the women of the village leave their beds—I mean, of course, the young women, the maids, with roses in their cheeks, and love in their hearts—and await impatiently the first minute of the first hour of March, the decisive minute for them. At the first stroke from the belfry tower their windows fly open, each girl leans out, and whispers in the darkness her prayer to Mars: "Bonjour, Mars; Comment te portes-tu Mars? Montre-moi dans mon dormant celui que j'aurai dans mon vivant."[193]

Then they go back to bed, and their lovers come floating into their dreams.[194]

Not very long ago in Arcy, the hamlet which gave its name to the famous grottos that so many travellers have visited and described, dwelt two splendid cocks, whose voices were the pride of the village. But a day came when they were heard no more. The birds stood downcast, each upon his favourite waste-heap, wheezing vainly from a voiceless throat. Then it was known that they had been bewitched by a wicked sorcerer. Their owner was in consternation. For who would wake him now in the morning and hearten him cheerily for his day's work? So he went off to discuss his trouble with one in the village who was known to be wise in these matters; and this man told him at once the remedy.

"You must give the cocks," he said, "barley cooked at the rising of the moon." The owner went home straightway; did as he was bid, and in the grey light of the following morning, to his great joy, he was awakened by his two chanticleers announcing lustily, from rival dung-heaps, the coming of the dawn.

Not less fantastic, nor less poetical in conception, are some of the measures adopted for the cure of personal ills. "Indeed," says M. Fertiault, "it is difficult to conceive the amount of imaginative labour these rustic intelligencies impose upon themselves, in their efforts to heal those who are dear to them. They vie with one another in rummaging among old customs, to find the best cure. Antoinette will take her sick Pierre to the church, and, somehow or other, holding him by the hands and under the arms, will lead him nine times round the altar so that health may come again; well she knows, too, what healing virtue there is, for children's fevers, in the sweet odour of hawthorn in spring; for did not the murderers of Christ weave for him a crown of thorns."[195]

It is around such places as Verdun, where the mind is not too much distracted by archÆological interests, that one's thoughts can escape from the town, into the fertile surrounding lands, and picture scenes that M. Fertiault has described for us so vividly, such as the autumn fÊte of the grand teillage when they work far into the night, beside the great bonfires, the boys and girls sitting around the piles of hemp. The work goes ahead speedily; and much chaffing and many a merry jest inspire deft fingers to outdo one another in peeling the hemp. The little mountains grow smaller, disappear. The workers gather up what is left of the peeled stalks, and pile them upon the fire which blazes again into a feu de joie. All dance round it gleefully; some even jump through the tongues of flame, believing that courage will make them incombustible. Then each takes his girl, and together they go home through the autumn night, the maid and the boy she had seen in her dreams six months ago, when, with her long hair falling about her face, she had leaned from the window, to say "Good-morning" to March. And as they go, they sing:

"And if ever one day you love me less than you love me to-night?"

"Eh ben! ma foi?

"Eh ben! Pierre ... je mourrais." 'Tis time to say "Good-night" at the cottage gate.

Or it is a winter scene that comes. The copper lamp, hanging from a beam, does its best, though not quite successfully, to play the part of the moon upon a harvest field. Catherine plies her distaff busily, making her bobbin hum; Toinette knits, steadily as a machine, a thick, woollen stocking; Jacquot mends, with osier rushes, a basket for next summer's vintage. Justin, sitting with his face to the back of his chair, is cutting, upon the blade of an iron shovel, bunches of maize, of which the grains go raining down and dancing up from the heaps in the vessel below. The old father, Claude, does just nothing at all. A long life of hard work has well earned him some idle hours; and he is content to sit and doze by the fireside; just throwing in a word now and again; when the right cord is struck, or something reminds him of a story of his early escapades, in the days when he was as Jacquot is—with a good hand for the plough, a good heart for the girls, and a good stomach for a bowl of la Pochouse.[196]

So, through the quiet round of French rustic life, the generations are born, are married, and pass again to the keeping of the earth that kept them.

The second of these episodes, marriage, in a family of any consequence, in the olden time, was a charmingly elaborate and picturesque function. Much of the poetry of it has now passed for ever; though, a few years back, a prominent citizen of the locality decided to revive all the ceremonies at his daughter's wedding, and did so with complete success.

I have not the space here to describe in detail, as I would—as M. Fertiault has done so effectively in "Une Noce d'Autrefois en Bourgogne,"—all that took place. But I cannot pass it by wholly in silence.

The wedding festivities extend over three days. The first day is full of processions, and fife and drum, and flying ribbons, and sweetmeats, and official journeys to summon from their abodes the Dames d'honneur, who attend upon the bride. Then comes the municipal ceremony at the mairie—the official marriage—and then the return to the HÔtel des Trois Maures, where the bride and bridegroom, who, all the time have been scattering sweetmeats right and left, receive, in their turn, an aspersion of grains of corn, which come showering down upon them from the upper windows. This is the ceremony of "Sowing the ÉpousÉs"; the golden rain is a blessing upon the marriage, a poetical invocation of the good-will of Plenty's Goddess.

Then before the spread feast, comes the trempÉe, the health-drinking, a very significant function in a wine country. But first they clink glasses—for franc Bourguignon, on ne boit jamais sans trinquer—and having drunk, clink again, and all relatives and intimates—relatives embrace cousins, as the boy's latin book darkly hints—give the bride the baiser de la trempÉe.

Then there is feasting, more healths, more music; then a general cry for the farandole, and in an instant they are wreathing it, uninvited and all, in hall, and lane, and street; fife and tambourine and flying feet are at it with an Élan that even that sunny land of song and dance, Provence, would find it hard to equal. In the evening there is a great ball given to the guests, and, on the next days, more processions, and a ball for the uninvited, at which the bride and bridegroom appear for a few minutes, open the dancing with a contre-danse, and then withdraw.

The third day's round is somewhat similar, but there are fewer ladies present—many of them have had enough—and one notices, walking behind the drums and fifes, an individual carrying a laurel—not a branch, but a bush, well-grown and decked with ribbons. At the maison paternelle a halt is made, and all gather round to admire the laurel. Then he calls for the strongest volunteers to assist the bearer.

"Are you ready, you six?" "Yes," in six voices.

"You know the job is none so easy—dangerous too?"

"No fun if it wasn't."

"To it, then."

"Tie it well!"

"And as high as you can!"

"Come down now—and take care!"

They have to tie the laurel to the highest chimney of the house.

They mount gaily, for they are very excited, and, moreover, have a bottle with them, a bottle of good wine; good, sparkling, red wine that is pushing at the cork. They are going to sprinkle the tree with it. Happy tree!

But the boys have had their share these days—'tis fairly the tree's turn. So they mount to the roof, called the lid in the locality.

"Not too steep, is it?"

"Not a bit."

"Can you stick it?"

"Rather—comfortable as an armchair!" At last it is done, well done, with a good stout cord.

"Look out for the baskets, John!" John pours prodigally, till the wine is trickling down the wall, and making a little rivulet in the street.

"Long life to the laurel" yell the five others. "Long life to the porteur."

"A la santÉ des camarades."

All glasses are charged; then comes the clash of a trinquade, and, in an instant, every glass is drained. Jests fly about, and laughter. There is more drinking, more trinquades.

"La ronde, the round of the laurel! Allons!"

"Hands for the round—and hold tight."

Beating time with their feet, they dance round the chimney, until the tiles resound, singing:

The laurel is well fixed, the drums cease. From every window of the house, besieged by the gamins, pours down a shower of sugar plums. The timid ones get what they can, the greedy fight and struggle. After the mass it is still worse; there is many a sore head for souvenir. Fameux! Fameux les enfants! But the thing has been mightily well done.

While we are talking about these ancient customs, let us spare a word or two for the tongue which was heard through so many of them—the patois. The Burgundian patois, to use Sainte-Beuve's picturesque expression—"a eu des malheurs"; it has never become a living language as the Breton and the ProvenÇal have, and is therefore doomed, I suppose, to early destruction; as its older devotees die off, and the young peasant, versed in the language of towns, learns to despise his father's tongue.

M. Perrault-Dabot, in his excellent little work on the subject,[197] tells us that, as might have been expected, all the many races that have inhabited or influenced Burgundy—the Eduens, the Romans, the Flemish—have left their traces upon its local tongue. Its chief defect, he adds, is that, like the country itself, half plain half mountain, it lacks unity. Placed between the two great centres of the Langue d'Oil and Langue d'Oc, it has naturally drawn from both. In accent, its chief characteristics are vivacity, expression, and charm; it comes between the northern lisp and the resonant redundance of the southern tongue, and is spoken in a sing-song manner not easily rendered typographically. It has many peculiar words, phrases, and idioms, but does not appear to have taken definite form until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when it was spoken in all the provinces of eastern and central France, and also in the Canton of Geneva (Switzerland), which once formed part of the ancient kingdom of Burgundy.

To the practised ear, a Burgundian reveals his origin at once, by the way he pronounces his a's. A becomes  (ah) in all words such as cave, table, Jacques, terminated by a dumb syllable, and the O is shortened in all words ending in ot or op, such as gigot or sirop.

The Burgundian offers no exception to the general rule that the words peculiar to a dialect are often very beautiful. Provence gives us "voun, voun" for the hum of the bees, Normandy gives us "boisettes" for the dead sticks that the peasants gather for faggots; while from Burgundy we get "faublette" for a little tale. For "beggar," instead of a brutal word like "mendiant," they say "cherchou de pain." There is purity in their dialect, as in their customs.

While writing these pages upon the old creeds and customs of rustic Burgundy, I have felt strongly, as a foreigner, my inefficiency for such a task, and have wished that I could hand over my pen to the Burgundian poet, my friend, M. FranÇois Fertiault, by whose kind permission I am able to make use of so much material that is his, and to whom any merit there may be in this chapter is wholly due. Had his still firm and active, though aged hand, taken up my task, my readers would well have been able to say, as the peasants of Burgundy, with one voice, have said of his work: "YÉ ben vr qu' tout c'qui s'passe cheu nous."