“Planh sobre planh! dolor sobre dolor! Cel e terra an perdut lor senhor, E yeu mon filh, el solelh sa clardor; Jusieus lan mort an grande desonor. Ay filh, tan mortal dolor!”[48] The cry of _Ay filh!_—“Alas! my Son”—at the end of every verse is like a sob that breaks the plaint. This long wail of maternal grief, which no translation fully renders, was doubtless sung round many an effigy of the dead Christ in the dim old churches of Languedoc centuries ago, just as the people of the Pyrenees at this day gather around their dead to weep and improvise a dirge of sorrow. We were particularly touched at coming across this ancient document; for it seemed to echo the devotion to the Mother of Sorrows which we had found written all over southwestern France. Everywhere in this _Terra Mariæ_ are churches and oratories in honor of _Notre Dame de Pitié_, most of which are monuments of an age as sorrowful as the holy mystery they commemorate. It is remarkable how popular devotion turned to the _Mater Dolorosa_ in the sixteenth century, when Christ seemed bleeding anew in this land of altars ruined and priests slaughtered by the Huguenots. Numberless are the legends of the apparitions of Our Lady of Sorrows in those sad days, which led to the erection of a great number of churches wherein she is represented holding her divine Son taken down from the cross—one of the most affecting appeals that can be made to the human heart. For the long, sad procession of mourners who go weeping and groaning through this valley of tears—_gementes et flentes in hac lacrymarum valle_—constitutes the greater part of the human race. The widow, the orphan, the friendless, the infirm, the needy, and the laborer with little or no joy in life, when they turn towards Mary, love to find her at the foot of the cross in mute sorrow over the inanimate form of her Son, or with the wheel of swords in her bleeding heart, or some other attribute of human infirmity. Hence the names given to these mountain chapels by the sorrowful as a mark of their trust in this sweet type of grief: _Notre Dame des Larmes_, _Notre Dame des Souffrances_, _de la Consolation_, _de l’Espérance_—names which have balm in their very sound. Above all is the title which seems to include all other sorrows—_Notre Dame de Pitié_—the most common among the perils of the mountain streams and on the broad moors of the Landes. There are innumerable _Pietàs_, or _Pitiés_, all through this region—on the sands of the seashore below Bayonne, where the sailors go to pray before embarking on the perfidious waves of the Bay of Biscay; in dangerous mountain passes, as in the oratory of Pène-Taillade beyond Arreau; among country groves, as in the lone sanctuary near Lannemezan to which the husbandman resorts to be spared the ravages of hail among his vines and wheat-fields; in the valleys of Bigorre; on the Calvary of Betharam; on the heights near Pau; and at Goudosse, where the poor