En bonne étrenne.
Voici le mois,
Le joli mois de Mai,
Qu’on vous amène.’
If the quêteurs come on a churl, they have an ill-wishing variant. The following is characteristic of the French peasantry:
‘J’vous souhaitons autant d’enfants,
Qu’y a des pierrettes dans les champs.’
Often more practical tokens of revenge are shown. The Plough Monday ‘bullocks’ in some places consider themselves licensed to plough up the ground before a house where they have been rebuffed.’
[554] Mrs. Gomme, ii. 1, 399; Haddon, 343; Du Méril, La Com. 81. Amongst the jeux of the young Gargantua (Rabelais, i. 22) was one ‘à semer l’avoyne et au laboureur.’ This probably resembled the games of Oats and Beans and Barley, and Would you know how doth the Peasant? which exist in English, French, Catalonian, and Italian versions. On the mimetic character of these games, cf. ch. viii.
[555] Text from Harl. MS. 978 in H. E. Wooldridge, Oxford Hist. of Music, i. 326, with full account. The music, to which religious as well as the secular words are attached, is technically known as a rota or rondel. It is of the nature of polyphonic part-song, and of course more advanced than the typical mediaeval rondet can have been.