Re-naud, Re-naud, mon ré-con-fort,
Te voi-là donc en rang des morts!
Di-vin Re-naud mon ré-con-fort,
Te voi-là donc en rang des—morts!—

the last stanza very naïvely telling of her own death:

‘She had said for him three verses; at the first she confessed,
At the second she took sacrament; at the third she expired.’

The music is notable not only for its perfect symmetry and the fidelity with which it expresses the sentiment, but also its discriminating use of the natural and flatted B to produce a plaintive effect. (To both the employment of ‘modern’ tonality and the chromatic element in popular song we shall have occasion to return.) The 6/8 rhythm is no less remarkable, giving the piece a crispness and definiteness never attained by mediæval church music.

Parallel to the narrative song there developed a lighter genre, as old as the complainte itself, which corresponds to comedy as the latter does to tragedy. Its personages are the same, but stripped of all their sombre aspect; its story has a happy conclusion; its subject is not infrequently comic and satirical. Tiersot quotes, in contrast to the Chanson de Renaud, an example which is still heard in the provinces of France.[72] Like the song already quoted, it narrates the return of soldiers from the war, but, where the first has the mark of death upon him, the other returns with a ‘rose between his lips.’ It is perhaps not so old as the Chanson de Renaud, but equally characteristic and particularly ‘Gallic’ in flavor:

[PNG] [[audio/mpeg]]

Trois jeun’ tam-bours
S’en re-ve-nant de guer-re,
Trois jeun’ tam-bours
S’en re-ve-nant de guerre,
Et ri et ran, ran pe-ta-plan,
S’en re-ve-nant de guer-re.

Note the crisp rhythm, the decided major tonality, and the exuberant spirit of the song. Many early melodies show these same characteristics, which at once remind us of that other elemental form of folk music—the dance song, in which rhythm is the essential element.