The Béarnais speak a _patois_, or idiom, composed of the structural elements of Celtic, Latin and Spanish. It is not a language, like the Breton or the Basque, but simply a hybrid means of expression, difficult enough for outsiders to become proficient in, but not at all unfamiliar in sound to one used to the expressions of the Latin races. It is more like the Provençal of the Bouches-du-Rhône than anything else, but very little like the Romance tongue of Languedoc. In cadence the Béarnais _patois_ is sweet and musical, and the literature of the tongue, mostly pastoral poetry, is of a beauty approaching the epilogues of Virgil. The _patois_ is the speech of the country people, and French that of the town dwellers. The educated classes may speak French, but, almost without exceptions, they know also the _patois_, as is the case in Provence, where the _patois_ is reckoned no _patois_ at all, but a real tongue, and has the most profuse literature of any of the anciently spoken tongues of France. The following lines in the Béarnais _patois_ show its possibilities. They were sung when Jeanne de Navarre was giving birth to the infant prince who was to become Henri IV. _"Nouste Dame deü cap deü poün,_ _Adyudat-me à d'acquest'hore;_ _Pregats au Dioü deü ceü_ _Qu'emboulle bié delioura ceü,_ _D'u maynat qu'em hassie lou doun_ _Tou d'inqu' aü haut dous mounts l'implore_ _Adyudat-me à d'acquest'hore."_ The significance of these lines was that the queen prayed God that she might be delivered of her child without agony, but above all that it might be born a boy. Béarn was fairly populous in the old days with a well distributed population, and the towns were all relatively largely inhabited. Now, in some sections, as in the Pays de Baretous, for example, the region is losing its population daily, and in half a century the figures have decreased something like thirty per cent. Like many other Pyrenean valleys the population has largely emigrated to what they call "les Amériques," meaning, in this case, South or Central America, never North America. Buenos Ayres they know, also "la ville de Mexique," but New York is a vague, meaningless term to the peasant of the French Pyrenees. The _bastides_,--the country houses, often fortified châteaux with dependencies,--originally a Béarnais institution, often remained stagnant hamlets or villages instead of developing into prosperous towns as they did elsewhere in the Midi of France, particularly in Gascogne and Languedoc. Many a time their sites had been chosen fortunately, but instead of a bourg growing up around them they remained isolated and backward for no apparent reason whatever.