92 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



left its characteristic mark on some of the best-known Canadian love- 

 sontjs. This is hardly surprising, when Ave remember that the love-song, 

 as we know it. owes its very existence to chivalry, and that true chivalry 

 is the fittest theme of song : 



Servants d'amour, rejïardez doucement, 

 Aux t'chafauds anges de paradis ; 

 Lor.s jouterez fort et joyeusement, 

 Et vous serez honorés et chéris. 



Knights, lords, princes and kings are ail fomiliar ligures to us. In En 

 roiiLint ma houle the "canard blanc" is shot by "le fils du roi" ; ^' 

 another ••fils du roi "' hears the shepherdess singing " comme une demoi- 

 selle " by the famous '• Pont d'Avignon " ; '" '• trois filles d'un Prince " are 

 asleep beneath the " pommier doux " " and they wake to sing, in truly 

 chivalric style — 



Nos amants sont en guerre. 



Ils combattent pour nous ; 



" trois cavaliers barons " rescue the distressed damsel who rewards them 

 only with a song, saying — 



Mon petit cceur en gage 

 N'est pas pour un baron. •>- 



Kings themselves — like Cophetua who married the beggar-maid, and 

 Cormac who loved the Fair Eithne— think rustic courtship by no means 

 beneath them. When 



Le roi, par la fenêtre, 



saw three •' filles à marier" pass by, he hastened to join them, and then 



Le roi prit la plus jeune. 

 Dans la dans' l'a menée ; 

 A chaque tour de danse 

 Il voulait l'embrasser."* 



Even the good bourgeois goes a-courting like a knight : 



Dans Paris ya-t-une brune 

 Plus beir que le jour ; 

 Sont trois bourgeois de la ville 

 Qui lui font l'amour ; 



and, when they are planning how best to win her, the youngest says — 



Je me frai faire une selle 

 Avec tous ses atours ; 

 Et j'irai de ville en ville 

 Toujours à son uoni.*'^ 



Then we have a whole complainte, Marùnison, breathing the very 

 spirit of the Middle Age ; and, beside these, there are many other vestiges 

 of the age of chivalry remaining, .sometimes in a phrase and sometimes 

 only in a single word ; but. perhaps, enough has been said to show that, in 



