five weeks the mother put the young wife to keep swine. The swine girl went up to the mountain top and sang and sang. Guilhem de Beauvoire, who was beyond the sea, said to his page, "Does it not seem as though my wife were singing?" He travels at all speed over mountain and sea till he comes to his home, where no man knows him. On the way he meets the swine girl, and from her he hears that she has to eat only that which is rejected of the swine. At the house he is welcomed as an honoured guest; supper is laid for him, and he asks that the swine girl whom he has seen may come and sup with him. When she sits down beside him the swine girl bursts into tears. "Why do you weep, swine girl?" "For seven years I have not supped at table!" Then in the bitterness of yet another outrage to which the vile woman subjects her, she cries aloud, "Oh! Guilhem de Beauvoire, who art beyond the sea, God help thee! Verily thy cruel mother has abandoned me!" Secretly Guilhem tells her who he is, and in proof of it shows her the ring she gave him. In the morning the mother calls the swine girl to go after her pigs. "If you were not my mother," says Guilhem, "I would have you hung; as you are my mother, I will wall you up between two walls." The antiquity of the ballads of _Fluranco_ and _Guilhem de Beauvoire_ is shown by the fact that they plainly belong to a time when such work as fetching water or making bread was regarded as amongst the likely employments of noble ladies--though, from excess of indulgence, Guilhem did not wish his wife to be set even to these light tasks. A ballad, probably of about the same date, treats the case of a man who, through the weakness which is the cause of half the crimes, becomes the agent of his mother's guilt. The tragedy is unfolded with almost the sublime laconicism of the _Divina Commedia_. Francoiso was married when she was so young that she did not know how to do the service, and the cruel mother was always saying to her son that Francoiso must die. One day, after the young wife had laid the table, and had set thereon the wine and the bread, and the fresh water, her husband said to her, "My Francoiso, is there not anyone, no friend, who shall protect thy life?" "I have my mother and my father, and you, who are my husband, very well will you protect my life." Then, as they sit at meat, he takes a knife and kills her; and he lifts her in his arms and kisses her, and lays her under the flower of the jessamine, and he goes to his mother and says, "My mother, your greatest wish is fulfilled: I have killed Francoiso."