For myself, the little town will always be associated with happy souvenirs, and with gracious pictures of country life, as it has been since first I rode there, on a warm September afternoon, along a pleasant, undulating road, through typical, low-lying lands of fertile Burgundy, sometimes running quite straight for several kilometres, sometimes curving slightly through golden vineyards, and fields of bearded maize, and crimson clover. I passed through St. Loup, a village with a delightful Romanesque church, and through other attractive hamlets crowned with Gothic towers; by hay fields, where a late second crop was being taken in, by rich arable lands, where yoked oxen were ploughing with attendant women clearing the way for the plough-share with a stick. I passed patches of fragrant wild flowers, and ill weeds growing in tangled masses by the road side, by rich grasses that lean cattle were stolidly munching. One of the boys who looked after them was singing a song. I could not catch the words exactly, nor the air, but I fitted the snatch of melody to the best of all Burgundian folk-songs, an exquisite little poem with a curious and very pretty history, that I am going to tell. This is the song. It is sung to-day, with local variations, not by the shepherds of Burgundy only, but throughout all France almost; in Dauphiné, in Champagne, in the lonely forests of the Ardennes. Eho! ého! ého! Les agneaux vont aux plaines, Eho! ého! ého! Et les loups sont aux bos. Tant qu'aux bords des fontaines, Ou dans les frais ruisseaux Les moutons baign'nt leur laine, I dansont au préau. Eho! ého! ého! Mais, queq'fois par vingtaines I s'éloign'nt des troupeaux Pour aller sous les chênes Qu'ri des herbag's nouviaux. Eho! ého! ého! T'es mon agneau, ma reine; Les grand's vill's, c'est les bos ... Par ainsi donc Mad'leine N't'en vas pas du hameau. Eho! ého! ého! Et ses ombres lointaines Leurs y cach'nt leurs bourreaux; Car, malgré leurs plaint's vaines, Les loups croqu'ent les agneaux. Eho! ého! ého! Eho! ého! ého! Les agneaux vont aux plaines Eho! ého! ého! Et les loups sont aux bos. The French is so simple that, though I have appended no translation, nearly all my readers will be able to feel some of the charm and lilt of the original. Generally speaking, of course, a folk song is not the work of one individual, but of many; it is essentially a local product, that grows with the years, and reflects truly the spirit of the land which gave it birth. Yet, strangely enough, this particular song, though it has all the virtues of its kind--the simplicity, the melody, the descriptive, pastoral, and amorous characteristics of a semi-southern race--is an exception to the general rule.