This is a base-born cousin of a pretty ballad known over all Southern Europe, and elsewhere (as among 1 the Slavs), but in especially graceful forms in France. The French ballad generally begins with a young man's announcing that he has won a mistress, and intends to pay her a visit on Sunday, or to give her an aubade. She declines his visit or his music. To avoid him she will turn, for example, into a rose; then he will turn bee, and kiss her. She will turn quail; he sportsman, and bag her. She will turn carp; he angler, and catch her. She will turn hare; and he hound. She will turn nun; he priest, and confess her day and night. She will fall sick; he will watch with her, or be her doctor. She will become a star; he a cloud, and muffle her. She will die; he will turn earth, into which they will put her, or St. Peter, and receive her into Paradise. In the end she says, "Since you are inevitable, you may as well have me as another;" or more complaisantly, "Je me donnerai á toi, puisque tu m'aimes tant."
There can be little doubt that the ballads are derived, or take their hint, from popular tales, in which (1) a youth and maid, pursued by a sorcerer, fiend, giant, ogre, are transformed by the magical powers of one or the other into such shapes as enable them to elude, and finally to escape, apprehension; or (2) a young fellow, who has been apprenticed to a sorcerer, fiend, etc., and has acquired the black art by surreptitious reading in his master's books, being pursued, as before, assumes a variety of forms, and his master others, adapted to the destruction of his intended victim, until the tables are turned by the fugitive's taking on the stronger figure and despatching his adversary.
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