ns. The Palais de Justice and the majesty of the Law was
obliged to intervene. The Duc de Longueville, Governor of the
Province, tried to smooth over the crisis with the gift of a new and
most enormous log; but nothing could replace the relic that was gone.
At last the good priests of each parish set to work to heal the
breach, and soundly damned each hardened sinner who attempted to break
the good peace of the town with further quarrels. Messire Francois de
Harlai, Archbishop of Rouen, aided their efforts, and at last the feud
died down; but the event was never forgotten:

"Donc qu'o mette o calendrier
Qu'o dix huitiesme de Janvier
Fut pris et ravy notte BOISE
Boise dont j'etions pu jaloux
Et pu glorieux entre nous
Que Rouen n'est de Georg d'Amboise."

David Ferrand's "patois" has preserved a good deal of the life and
humour--racy of the soil--that gave Rouen her character, even after
the sixteenth century was over. Something of the old life and its
bravery lingered a little longer, and in the more pretentious Latin
poems of Hercule Grisel you see how all these fetes and jollities
lasted on till well into the seventeenth century. The Fete St. Anne,
when boys dressed as angels and girls as virgins ran about the
streets; the St. Vivien, which was a great popular fair in Bois
Guillaume and in the city; the Festin du Cochon, when Parliament was
dined; the Pentecost, when birds and leaves and flowers were rained
upon the congregation from the roof of the Cathedral; the Feast of the
Farmers, in November, when the principal dish of roast goose was
provided by a crowd of boys who had to kill the wretched bird by
throwing sticks at it, as it fluttered helplessly at the end of a high
pole; the Papegault, when the Cinquantaine, or Company of
Arquebusiers, went a-shooting to settle who should be the Roi
d'Oiseau, very much as it is described in Germany in the pages of Jean
Paul Richter; the Jeu d'Anguille in May, when there was a jousting
match upon the river like the water tournaments of Provence; the
jollities of Easter Eve, when bands of children went about the streets
shouting derision at the now dishonoured herring, and pitching barrels
and fish-barrows into the river; the greatest and most impressive
ceremony of all, the Levee de la Fierte, upon Ascension Day--all these
festivities made up a large part of the life of the real Rouennais of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which was so