In plays of the Saint Guillaume class, the plain language in which the vices and oppression of the nobles is denounced shows signs of the slow surging up of the democratic spirit whose traces through the middle ages are nowhere to be more fruitfully sought than in popular literature—though they lie less in the rustic drama than in the great mediæval satires, such as Reynard the Fox and Marcolfo, the latter of which is still known to the Italian people under the form of Bertoldo, in which it was recast in the sixteenth century, by G. B. Croce, the rhyming blacksmith of Bologna.
VII.
Epopees, chansons de geste, romantic ballads, occasional or ceremonial songs, nursery rhymes, singing-games, rustic dramas; to these must be added the great order of purely personal and lyrical songs, of which the unique and exclusive subject is love. Popular love songs have one quality in common: a sincerity which is not perhaps reached in the entire range of lettered amorous poetry. Love is to these singers a thing so serious that however high they fly, they do not outsoar what is to them the atmosphere of truth. "La passion parle là toute pure," as Molière said of the old song:
Si le roi m'avoit donné
Paris, sa grande ville,
Et qu'il me fallût quitter
L'amour de ma mie:
Je dirois au roi Henri
Reprenez votre Paris
J'aime mieux ma mie, oh gay!