-"I have struck a blow in the
Saracen's land; _let thy husband do the same!_"

[15] 'Le Misanthrope,' i. 2; he calls it a _vielle chanson_.
M. Tiersot concedes it to the popular muse, but thinks it is
of the city, not of the country.

[16] _May_, a favorite ballad word for "maid," "sweetheart."

[17] 'Carm. Bur.,' page 185: "Waer diu werlt alliu min."

The tone is not directly communal, but it smacks more of the village
dance than of the troubadour's harp; for even Bernart of Ventadour did
not dare to address Eleanor save in the conventional tone of despair.
The clerks and gleemen, however, and even English peasants of modern
times,[18] took another view of the matter. The "clerk," that
delightful vagabond who made so nice a balance between church and
tavern, between breviary and love songs, has probably done more for
the preservation of folk-song than all other agents known to us. In
the above verses he protests a trifle or so too much about himself;
let us hear him again as mere reporter for the communal lyric, in
verses that he may have brought from the dance to turn into his
inevitable Latin:--

Come, my darling, come to me,
I am waiting long for thee,--
I am waiting long for thee,
Come, my darling, come to me!

Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain,
Come and make me well again;--
Come and make me well again,
Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain.[19]

[18] See Child's Ballads, vi. 257, and Grandfer Cantle's
ballad in Mr. Hardy's 'Return of the Native.' See next page.

[19] 'Carm. Bur.,' page 208: "Kume, Kume, geselle min."

More graceful yet are the anonymous verses quoted in certain Latin
love-letters of a manuscript at Munich; and while a few critics rebel
at the notion of a folk-song, the pretty lines surely hint more of
field and dance than of the study.

Thou art mine,
I am thine,
Of that may'st certain be;
Locked thou art
Within my heart,
And I have lost the key:
There must thou ever be!

Now it happens that this notion of heart and key recurs in later
German folk-song. A highly popular song of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries has these stanzas:[20]

For thy dear sake I'm hither come,
Sweetheart, O hear me woo!
My hope rests evermore on thee,
I love thee well and true.
Let me but be thy servant,
Thy dear love let me win;
Come, ope thy heart, my darling,
And lock me fast within!