imond Feraud; the latest are of our own day--by
Roumanille, Crousillat, Mistral, Girard, Gras, and a score more. But
only a few have been written to live. The memory of many once-famous
noel-writers is preserved now either mainly or wholly by a single song.
Thus the Chanoine Puech, who died at Aix almost two hundred and fifty
years ago, lives in the noel of the Christ-Child and the three gypsy
fortune-tellers--which he stole, I am sorry to say, from Lope de Vega.
The Abbe Doumergue, of Aramon, who flourished at about the same period,
is alive because of his "March of the Kings": that has come ringing down
through the ages set to Lulli's magnificent "March of Turenne"; and it
is interesting to note that Lulli is said to have found his noble motive
in a Provencal air. Antoine Peyrol, who lived only a little more than a
century ago, and who "in our good city of Avignon was a carpenter and
wood-seller and a simple-hearted singer of Bethlehem" (as Roumanille
puts it) has fared better, more than a dozen of his noels surviving to
be sung each year when "the nougat bells" (as they call the Christmas
chimes in Avignon) are ringing in his native town. And, on the other
hand, as though to strike a balance between fame and forgottenness,
there are some widely popular noels--as "C'est le bon lever"--of which
the authorship absolutely is unknown; while there are still others--as
the charming "Wild Nightingale"--which belong to no one author, but have
been built up by unknown farm-house poets who have added fresh verses
and so have passed on the amended song.

The one assured immortal among these musical mortalities is Nicolas
Saboly: who was born in Monteux, close by Avignon, in the year 1614; who
for the greater part of his life was chapel-master and organist of the
Avignon church of St. Pierre; who died in the year 1675; and who lies
buried in the choir of the church which for so long he filled with his
own heaven-sweet harmonies. Of his beautiful life-work, Roumanille has
written: "As organist of the church of St. Pierre, Saboly soon won a
great and beautiful renown as a musician; but his fame and his glory
have come to him because of the blessed thought that he had of composing
his marvellous noels. Yet it was not until the year 1658, when he
himself was fifty-four years old, that he decided to tie together and to
publish his first sheaf of them. From that time onward, every year until
his end, a fresh sheaf of from six to a dozen