Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/167

 Rh German Mailieder are one very much like the other; they are full of the simple gladness of children who have been shut up in houses, and who now can run about in the sunny air. We came across the following in Switzerland:—

In Lorraine girls dressed in white go from village to village stringing off couplets, in which the inhabitants are turned into somewhat unmerciful ridicule. The girls of this place enlighten the people of that as to their small failings, and so vice versâ. All the winter the village poets harvest the jokes made by one community at the expense of another, in order to shape them into a consecutive whole for recital on May Day. The girls are rewarded for their part in the business by small coin, cakes, and fruit. The May-songs of Lorraine are termed "Trimazos," from the fact that they are always sung to the refrain,

What Trimazo means it would be hard to say, unless, as someone has suggested, Tri stands for three, and mazo for maidens. The word is known outside Lorraine: at Islettes children say:

They beg for money to buy a taper for the Virgin's altar; for it must not be forgotten that the month of May is the month of Mary. The villagers add a little flour to their pious offering, so that the children may make cakes. Elsewhere in Champagne young girls collect the