nts is attested in a
long narrative ballad by Antoine Du Plain on the siege of
Lyons (1563), in which Charles the Ninth figures as another
Josiah destined to abolish the idolatrous mass:

Ce Roy va chasser l'Idole
Plain de dole
Cognoissant un tel forfait:
Selon la vertu Royale,
Et loyale,
Comme Iosias a fait.

It is noticeable that the words "va chasser l'Idole" are an
anagram of the royal title _Charles de Valois_--an anagram
which gave the Huguenots no little comfort. The same play upon
words appears with a slight variation in a "Huictain au Peuple
de Paris, sur l'anagrammatisme du nom du tres-Chrestien Roy de
France, Charles de Valois IX. de ce nom" (Recueil des Choses
Memorables, 1565, p. 367), of which the last line is,

"O Gentil Roy qui _chassa leur idole_."

But after the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day the hopes of
the Huguenots were blighted. If the king is not referred to by
name, his mother figures as the guilty cause of all the
misfortune of France. She is a second Helen born for the ruin
of her adopted country, according to Etienne de Maisonfleur.

Helene femme estrangere
Fut la seule mesnagere
Qui ruina Ilion,
Et la reine Catherine
Est de France la ruine
Par l'Oracle de Leon.

"Leon" is Catharine's uncle, Pope Leo the Tenth, who was said
to have predicted the total destruction of whatever house she
should be married into. See also the famous libel "Discours
merveilleux de la vie de Catherine de Medicis" (Ed. of
Cologne, Pierre du Marteau, 1693), p. 609.

The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day naturally contributes a
considerable fund of laments, etc., to the Huguenot popular
poetry of the century. A poem apparently belonging to a more
remote date, discovered by Dr. Roullin, and perhaps the only
Breton song of the kind that has come down to us, is as simple
and unaffected a narrative as any of the modern Greek
_moerologia_ (Vaurigaud, Essaie sur l'hist. des eglises ref.
de Bretagne, 1870, i. 6). It tells the story of a Huguenot
girl betrayed to the executioner by her own mother. In spite
of a few dialectic forms, the verses are easily understood.

Voulz-vous ouir l'histoire
D'une fille d'espit
Qui n'a pas voulu croire
Chose que l'on lui dit.

--Sa mere dit: "Ma fille,