I take our Saviour as my father,
The Virgin Mary as my mother,
Saint John for my cousin,
Saint Michael for my sponsor.
There are god parents four.
Whatever haps, whatever befalls,
I shall go to Paradise.”
There are, in fact, in Guyenne four Paternosters—the great one, the small one, the Pater of Nazareth, and the Pater of Habit; and these make up one complete formula. M. Daymard, who has collected the folk-songs of Quercy, the present Department of Lot, says, “Who has not heard some old woman mutter her prayers in a monotonous voice, without accent, with, however, a sort of rhythmic cadence, like the reading of poetry by children in school?” If in the course of her prayers she be interrupted and questioned relative to what she has said, and asked to repeat it, it is rarely that one can be found to continue her prayers without recommencing the recitation.
“Very often the old women do not understand what they say. They repeat words which anciently were in Latin, Romance, or French, and which, passing from mouth to mouth, have become corrupted till they cease to be comprehensible. Then they have not, as an assistance to their memory, the help of an air and of couplets; consequently they slide away into the greatest confusion. Thus it falls out that the majority of these prayers are long, disconnected, made up of patches ill-stitched together, and without affinity, without transition. There are also set phrases and elements of prayer which recur, and which each pious soul throws into her common prayers without rhyme or reason.”
One of the Quercy prayers deserves quotation, because it also is akin to something that was customary in England, the Lykewake Dirge, which is found in Aubrey’s MS., already quoted, and was first published by Sir Walter Scott. The Quercy prayer is called “La Barbe-Dieu,” i.e. Verbum-Dei; barbe is a corruption. It runs thus:—