topping short.

Fully an hour was passed in this contest. As the two combatants were the
most learned men in the province in the matter of ballads, and as their
repertory seemed inexhaustible, it might well have lasted all night,
especially as the hemp-beater seemed to take malicious pleasure in
allowing his opponent to sing certain laments in ten, twenty, or thirty
stanzas, pretending by his silence to admit that he was defeated.
Thereupon, there was triumph in the bridegroom's camp, they sang in
chorus at the tops of their voices, and every one believed that the
adverse party would make default; but when the final stanza was half
finished, the old hemp-beater's harsh, hoarse voice would bellow out the
last words; whereupon he would shout: "You don't need to tire yourselves
out by singing such long ones, my children! We have them at our fingers'
ends!"

Once or twice, however, the hemp-beater made a wry face, drew his
eyebrows together, and turned with a disappointed air toward the
observant matrons. The grave-digger was singing something so old that
his adversary had forgotten it, or perhaps had never known it; but the
good dames instantly sang the victorious refrain through their noses, in
tones as shrill as those of the sea-gull; and the grave-digger, summoned
to surrender, passed to something else.

It would have been too long to wait until one side or the other won the
victory. The bride's party announced that they would show mercy on
condition that the others should offer her a gift worthy of her.

Thereupon, the song of the _livrees_ began, to an air as solemn as a
church chant.

The men outside sang in unison:

"Ouvrez la porte, ouvrez,
Marie, ma mignonne,
_J'ons_ de beaux cadeaux a vous presenter.
Helas! ma mie, laissez-nous entrer."[3]

To which the women replied from the interior, in falsetto, in doleful
tones:

"Mon pere est en chagrin, ma mere en grand' tristesse,
Et moi je suis fille de trop grand' merci
Pour ouvrir ma porte a _cette heure ici_."[4]

The men repeated the first stanza down to the fourth line, which they
modified thus:

"J'ons un beau mouchoir a vous presenter."[5]

But the women replied, in the name of the bride, in the same words as
before.

Through twenty stanzas, at least, the men enumerated all the gifts in
the _livree_, always mentioning a new article in the last verse: a
beautiful _devanteau_,--apron,--lovely ribbons, a cloth dres