Northern Antiquities_ (p. 379),
preserved a _cante-fable_ called _Rosmer Halfman_, or _The Merman
Rosmer_. Mr. Motherwell remarks (_Minstrelsy_, Glasgow, 1827, p. xv.):
"Thus I have heard the ancient ballad of _Young Beichan and Susy Pye_
dilated by a story-teller into a tale of remarkable dimensions--a
paragraph of prose and then a _screed_ of rhyme alternately given." The
example published by Mr. Motherwell gives us the very form _of Aucassin
and Nicolete_, surviving in Scotch folk lore:-

"Well ye must know that in the Moor's Castle, there was a mafsymore,
which is a dark deep dungeon for keeping prisoners. It was twenty feet
below the ground, and into this hole they closed poor Beichan. There he
stood, night and day, up to his waist in puddle-water; but night or day
it was all one to him, for no ae styme of light ever got in. So he lay
there a lang and weary while, and thinking on his heavy weird, he made a
murnfu' sang to pass the time--and this was the sang that he made, and
grat when he sang it, for he never thought of escaping from the
mafsymore, or of seeing his ain countrie again:

"My hounds they all run masterless,
My hawks they flee from tree to tree;
My youngest brother will heir my lands,
And fair England again I'll never see.

"O were I free as I hae been,
And my ship swimming once more on sea,
I'd turn my face to fair England,
And sail no more to a strange countrie."

"Now the cruel Moor had a beautiful daughter called Susy Pye, who was
accustomed to take a walk every morning in her garden, and as she was
walking ae day she heard the sough o' Beichan's sang, coming as it were
from below the ground."

All this is clearly analogous in form no less than in matter to our
_cante-fable_. Mr. Motherwell speaks of _fabliaux_, intended partly for
recitation, and partly for being sung; but does not refer by name to
_Aucassin and Nicolete_. If we may judge by analogy, then, the form of
the _cante-fable_ is probably an early artistic adaptation of a popular
narrative method.

STOUR; an ungainly word enough, familiar in Scotch with the sense of wind-
driven dust, it may be dust of battle. The French is _Estor_.

BIAUCAIRE, opposite Tarascon, also celebrated for its local hero, the
deathless Tartarin. There is a great deal of learning about Biaucaire;
probably the author of the _cante-fable_ never saw the place, but he need
not have thought it was on the sea-shore, as (p. 39