“Jésus, bous aouets tribaillat
Prenéts noste tribail en grat!”[100]
or:
“Jésus! bous ets lou boun Pastou,
Bost’oilhe qu’ey lou pécadou
Gouardats-lou deu loup infernau,
Et de touto sorto de mau!”[101]
Among other prayers they chant is a rhymed litany of twenty-seven saints of different trades, and twenty-one shepherd saints, with an appropriate invocation to each, not exactly poetical, but, sung by the uncultivated voices of poor laborers in that rustic chapel in a measured mournful cadence, there is something akin to poesy—something higher—which awakens profound and salutary thoughts. It is in this way they invoke S. Spiridion, the reaper; S. Auber, the laborer in the vineyard; S. Isidore, the gardener:
“Sent Isidore, qui ets estats Coum nous au tribail occupat,” etc.—S. Isidore, who wast like us in labor occupied, etc.—a touching appeal for sympathy to that unseen world of saints of every tribe and tongue and degree, which excludes not the highest, and admits the lowest.
The Church of Notre Dame de Tudet is about to be rebuilt. The corner-stone was laid a short time since on the feast of Our Lady of Protection, under the patronage of the pious descendants of the ancient Viscounts of Lomagne, true to the traditions of their race. The entire population of fourteen neighboring villages assembled to witness the solemn ceremony and pray in a spot so venerated by their ancestors. The mutilated statue of Gaudonville is to be restored, and brought back in triumph to the place where it was once so honored. Thus all through France there is a singular revival of devotion to the venerable sanctuaries of the Middle Ages. Everywhere they are being repaired or rebuilt—a significant fact of good augury for the church.