THE LITTLE GODEM 



in all cordiality and benevolence! Of a certainty not 

 one of those excellent people had the remotest idea of 

 the meaning of their " godem : " with them it was only the 

 established equivalent for English. 



The term is a noun, not an expletive, which has come 

 down through five centuriesfrom the days, in fact, of the 

 English occupation of France. Among the written records 

 of those stirring times we come across many a passage in 

 which a Duguesclin, a Maid of Orleans, or a Dunois is 

 heard to mention hatefully " les godems," or " les godons 

 d'Angleterre." Now, all that fertile country of the Vexin, 

 the Ile-de-France and the Beauce, of which the fat farm 

 land of my old pere Pelletier was so fair a sample, was 

 obstinately fought for by the English for the best part of a 

 century. Mantes-lajolie now mainly famed for its river 

 terraces, its sweet water grapes and its savoury matelottes 

 or eel stews was once a fortified place of note, taken and 

 retaken by French and English more than once/ but 

 finally captured <in 1418) by the noble Talbot, Earl of 

 Shrewsbury, the Achilles of England, as the French 

 themselves dubbed him, and firmly held by the " godems " 

 for more than thirty years. To have heard that mis- 

 pleasing word used dispassionately, merely as a 

 substantive, is indeed a link with the past. 

 Strange paths of the musing thought, winding from 

 Wisteria Sinensis to the days of our conquering English 

 archer ! 



I spoke of these childhood memories as of oddly clear 

 pictures emerging here and there out of grey mists of 



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