From a Cornish Window / A New Edition - Arthur Quiller-Couch

And:

"Máking the líttle one leáp for jóy.">[

But let Mrs. Woods resume the strain:—

"O that I were listening under the olives!
So should I hear behind in the woodland
The peasants talking. Either a woman,
A wrinkled granddame, stands in the sunshine,
Stirs the brown soil in an acre of violets—
Large odorous violets—and answers slowly
A child's swift babble; or else at noon
The labourers come. They rest in the shadow,
Eating their dinner of herbs, and are merry.
Soft speech Provençal under the olives!
Like a queen's raiment from days long perished,
Breathing aromas of old unremembered
Perfumes, and shining in dust-covered palaces
With sudden hints of forgotten splendour—
So on the lips of the peasant his language,
His only now, the tongue of the peasant."

Say what you will, there is a dignity about these Latin races, even in their trivial everyday movements. They suggest to me, as those lines of Homer suggested to Mr. Pater's Marius, thoughts which almost seem to be memories of a time when all the world was poetic:—

"And how poetic," says Pater, "the simple incident seemed, told just thus! Homer was always telling things after this manner. And one might think there had been no effort in it: that here was but the almost mechanical transcript of a time naturally, intrinsically poetic, a time in which one could hardly have spoken at all without ideal effect, or the sailors pulled down their boat without making a picture in 'the great style' against a sky charged with marvels."

One evening in last February a company of Provençal singers, pipers, and tambour players came to an hotel in Cannes, and entertained us. They were followed next evening by a troupe of German-Swiss jödelers; and oh, the difference to me—and, for that matter, to all of us! It was just the difference between passion and silly sentiment—silly and rather vulgar sentiment. The merry Swiss boys whooped, and smacked their legs, and twirled their merry Swiss girls about, until vengeance overtook them—a vengeance so complete, so surprising, that I can hardly now believe what my own eyes saw and my own ears heard. One of the merry Swiss girls sang a love-ditty with a jödeling refrain, which was supposed to be echoed back by her lover afar in the mountains. To produce this pleasing illusion, one of the merry Swiss boys ascended the staircase, and hid himself deep in the corridors of the hotel. All went well up to the last verse. Promptly and truly the swain echoed his sweetheart's call; softly it floated down to us—down from the imaginary pasture and across the imaginary valley. But as the maiden challenged for the last time, as her voice lingered on the last note of the last verse… There hung a Swiss cuckoo-clock in the porter's office, and at that very instant the mechanical bird lifted its voice, and nine times answered 'Cuckoo' on the exact note! "Cuckoo, Cuckoo, O word of fear!" I have known coincidences, but never one so triumphantly complete. The jaw of the Swiss maiden dropped an inch; and, as well as I remember, silence held the company for five seconds before we recovered ourselves and burst into inextinguishable laughter.