of vervein. Seated by her
door, the lady of this palace spins and watches some sheep. We are not
yet rich enough to keep a cow; but to that we may come in time, if
Heaven will bless our house. The wood, a bit of pasture, and some bees
about our ground--such is our way of life! But little corn is
cultivated as yet, there being no assurance of a harvest so long of
coming. Such a life, however needy, is anyhow less hard for the woman:
she is not broken down and withered, as she will be in the days of
large farming. And she has more leisure withal. You must never judge
of her by the coarse literature of the Fabliaux and the Christmas
Carols, by the foolish laughter and license of the filthy tales we
have to put up with by and by. She is alone; without a neighbour. The
bad, unwholesome life of the dark, little, walled towns, the mutual
spyings, the wretched dangerous gossipings, have not yet begun. No old
woman comes of an evening, when the narrow street is growing dark, to
tempt the young maiden by saying how for the love of her somebody is
dying. She has no friend but her own reflections; she converses only
with her beasts or the tree in the forest.

[18]

"Trois pas du cote du banc,
Et trois pas du cote du lit;
Trois pas du cote du coffre,
Et trois pas---- Revenez ici."

(_Old Song of the Dancing Master._)

Such things speak to her, we know of what. They recall to her mind the
saws once uttered by her mother and grandmother; ancient saws handed
down for ages from woman to woman. They form a harmless reminder of
the old country spirits, a touching family religion which doubtless
had little power in the blustering hurly-burly of a great common
dwellinghouse, but now comes back again to haunt the lonely cabin.

It is a singular, a delicate world of fays and hobgoblins, made for a
woman's soul. When the great creation of the saintly Legend gets
stopped and dried up, that other older, more poetic legend comes in
for its share of welcome; reigns privily with gentle sway. It is the
woman's treasure; she worships and caresses it. The fay, too, is a
woman, a fantastic mirror wherein she sees herself in a fairer guise.

Who were these fays? Tradition says, that of yore some Gaulish queens,
being proud and fanciful, did on the coming of Christ and His Apostles
behave so insolently as to turn their backs upon them. In Brittany
they were dancing at the moment, and never stopped dancing. Hence
their har