onour and a privilege to walk in the procession of the offered lamb.

Slowly that strange company moved toward the altar, where the
ministering priest awaited its coming; and at the altar steps the
bearers of the fruit and the doves separated, so that the little cart
might come between them and their offering be made complete, while the
other shepherds formed a semi-circle in the rear. The music was stilled,
and the priest accepted and set upon the altar the baskets; and then
extended the paten that the shepherds, kneeling, might kiss it in token
of their offering of the lamb. This completed the ceremony. The
_tambourin_ and _galoubet_ and _palets_ and _carlamuso_ all together
struck up again; and the shepherds and the lamb's car passed down the
nave between the files of candle-bearers and so out through the door.

Within the past sixty years or so this naive ceremony has fallen more
and more into disuse. But it still occasionally is revived--as at
Barbentane in 1868, and Rognonas in 1894, and repeatedly within the past
decade in the sheep-raising parish of Maussane--by a cure who is at one
with his flock in a love for the customs of ancient times. Its origin
assuredly goes back far into antiquity; so very far, indeed, that the
airs played by the musicians in the procession seem by comparison quite
of our own time: yet tradition ascribes the composition of those airs to
the good King Rene, whose happy rule over Provence ended more than four
centuries ago.

Another custom of a somewhat similar character, observed formerly in
many of the Provencal churches, was the grouping before the altar at the
mass on Christmas Day of a young girl, a choir-boy, and a dove: in
allegorical representation of the Virgin Mary, the Angel Gabriel, and
the Holy Ghost. But the assembly of this quaint little company long
since ceased to be a part of the Christmas rite.

XVII

When the stir caused by the coming and the going of the shepherds had
subsided, the mass went on; with no change from the usual observance,
until the Sacrament was administered, save that there was a vigorous
singing of noels. It was congregational singing of a very enthusiastic
sort--indeed, nothing short of gagging every one of them could have kept
those song-loving Provencaux still--but it was led by the choir, and
choristers took the solo parts. The most notable number was the famous
noel in which the crowing of a cock alternates with the note of a
nightingale;