#A.# 'Renauld et ses quatorze Femmes,' 44 vv, Paymaigre, Chants populaires recueillis dans le pays messin, No 31, I, 140. Renauld carried off the king's daughter. When they were gone half-way, she called to him that she was dying of hunger (cf. German #A-F#). Eat your hand, he answered, for you will never eat bread again. When they had come to the middle of the wood, she called out that she was dying of thirst. Drink your blood, he said, for you will never drink wine again. When they came to the edge of the wood, he said, Do you see that river? Fourteen dames have been drowned there, and you shall be the fifteenth. When they came to the river-bank, he bade her put off her cloak, her shift. It is not for knights, she said, to see ladies in such plight; they should bandage their eyes with a handkerchief. This Renauld did, and the fair one threw him into the river. He laid hold of a branch; she cut it off with his sword (cf. the Polish ballad, where the catastrophe, and consequently this act, is reversed). "What will they say if you go back without your lover?" "I will tell them that I did for you what you meant to do for me."[67] "Reach me your hand; I will marry you Sunday." "Marry, marry a fish, Renauld, The fourteen women down below." #B.# 'De Dion et de la Fille du Roi,' from Auvergne, Ampère, Instructions, etc., 40 vv, p. 40, stanzas 15-24, the first fourteen constituting another ballad.[68] The pair went five or six leagues without exchanging a word; only the fair one said, I am so hungry I could eat my fist. Eat it, replied Dion, for you never again will eat bread. Then they went five or six leagues in silence, save that she said, I am so thirsty I could drink my blood. "Drink it, for you never will drink wine. Over there is a pond in which fifteen ladies have had a bath, have drowned themselves, and you will make sixteen." Arrived at the pond, he orders her to take off her clothes. She tells him to put his sword under his feet, his cloak before his face, and turn to the pond; and, when he has done so, pushes him in. Here are my keys! he cries. "I don't want them; I will find locksmiths." "What will your friends say?" "I will tell them I did by you as you would have done by me." #C.# 'Veux-tu venir, bell' Jeanneton,' 32 vv, from Poitou and Aunís, Bujeaud, II, 232. When they reach the water, the fair one asks for a drink. The man says, incoherently enough, Before drinking of this white wine I mean to drink your blood. The stanza that should tell how many have been drowned before is lost. Jeanneton, having been ordered to strip, pushes the "beau galant" into the sea, while, at her request, he is pulling off her stockings. He catches at a branch; she cuts it off, and will not hear to his entreaties.