Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/112

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. II. AUG. 6, '98.

introduced by myself). In going through Mistral's beautiful and interesting poem ' Mireio ' (' Mireille '), I have met with a fine description of the wild, or half-wild, horses of Camargue, which I venture to quote for the benefit of readers who have not yet shaken hands with Frederic Mistral. Ca- margue is described in a note as

" vaste delta forme" par la bifurcation du Rhone

L'immensit de ses horizons, le silence grandiose de ses plaines unies, son etrange vegetation, son mirage, ses etangs, ses essaims de moustiques, ses grands troupeaux de boaufs et de chevaux sauvages, etonnent le voyageur, et font penser aux pampas de 1'Amerique du Sud."

As the original Provencal would probably be of little use to most ot your readers as, indeed, it is of little use to myself without the translation I quote from the " traduc- tion litterale en regard " in Charpentier's edition, 1896 :

" Cent cavales blanches ! La criniere comme la massette des marais, ondoyante, tonffue, et franche du ciseau. Dans leurs ardents elans lorsqu'elles partaient ensuite, effrenees, comme I'echarpe d'une fee au-dessus de leurs cous elle flottait dans le ciel.

" Honte a toi, race humaine ! Les cavales de

Camargue encheyetrees par trahison, j'en ai vu

exiler loin des prairies salines ;

"Etunjour, d'un bond reveche et prompt Jeter bas quiconque les monte, d'un galop devorer vingt lieues de marecages, flairant le vent ! et revenues au Vaccares ou elles naquirent, apres dix ans d'es- clavage respirer 1'emanation salee et libre de la mer.

"Car a cette race sauvage son element, c'est la mer : du char de Neptune echapp^e sans doute, elle est encore teinte d'ecume ; et quand la mer souffle et s'assombrit, quand des vaisseaux rompent les cables, les etalons de Camargue hennissent de bonheur ;

" Et font claquer comme la ficelle d'un fouet leur longue queue trainante ; et grattent le sol, et sentent dans leur chair entrer le trident du dieu terrible qui dans un horrible pele-mele meut la tem- pete et le deluge, et bouleverse de fond en comble les abimes de la mer." Chant iv. stanzas 30-34.

As it may interest your readers, I append the first of the foregoing verses in the original Provencal :

Cent ego bianco ! La creniero, Coume la sagno di sagniero,

Oundejanto, fougouso, e franco dou ciseu. Dins sis ardentis abrivado Quand piei partien, descaussanado, Coume la cherpo d' uno fado

En dessus de si cou floutavo dins lou ceu.

A friend of mine, well known to the readers of ' N. & Q.,' but whose name I do not feel at liberty to mention, has translated the delight- ful song of ' Magali ' in chant iii. into verse worthy of the original. I am not aware that he knows Provencal, so I presume he has translated it from the French version. It is a real pleasure to me to read his flowing verses, a pleasure which I wish I could share

with other readers of ' N. & Q.' who are fond of poetry. JONATHAN BOUCHIBR.

Ropley, Alresford, Hants.

ST. FURSEY. (See ante, p. 25.) Your cor- respondent J. B. S., who, under the head of ' Danteiana,' contributes "notes" upon Dante from Lombardi, Cary, Scartazzini, &c., as if the writings of these commentators were inaccessible to readers of 'N. & Q.,' asks, " Who was St. Fursey ?"

St. Furseus was an Irishman who, accord- ing to Bede (' Hist. Eccles.,' III. xix.), came to England in 633 and founded a monastery at " Gnaresburc," or " Cnobheresburg " (the pre- sent Burgh in Suffolk). His legend, a version of which is given by Bede, occurs in ' Le Miroir ' (otherwise known as ' Les Evangiles des Domees'), an Anglo-Norman poem by Robert de Gretham (thirteenth century). I have printed an extract from this poem con- taining the legend from a British Museum MS. (Add. 26,773) in my ' Specimens of Old French' (pp. 229-33), with variants from a Cambridge MS. printed by Paul Meyer in Romania (xv. 296-305).

PAGET TOYNBEE.

Dorney Wood, Burnham, Bucks.

ECCENTRICITIES OF TEMPERATE LATITUDES. Our so-called temperate latitudes doubt- less afford us more interest through their excessive caprices than would latitudes either tropical or polar. But often their irregularities are so marked that the memories of the oldest inhabitants of this or that town are taxed to little or no purpose in order to parallel the cold, or the heat, or the force of the wind, or the rainfall. And if we take a group of years and examine their extraordinarily divergent types of character, we may be tempted to look upon our " temperate " climates rather in the light of "fell incensed points 'twixt mighty opposites," and the British Isles per- haps as the centre of intensest quarrel. For here, within brief memory, one has known the lobsters and crabs killed in the sea by cold ; one has experienced droughts that have cost millions of money ; arid one has known an Atlantic gale burn up with a crust of salt the horse-chestnut leaves over the entire island. Nowhere in Europe are the chances so great against the weather pro- phet ; nowhere is so much speculation about the weather. Judging vaguely from the past, maybe we have ground for expecting that about three times in a century the Thames will be frozen over at London Bridge ; but that consummation is synonymous with an intense degree of continuous frost which