l Almanac) in 1867
(Daudet was in Provence during this year). This Almanac was first
published in the year 1855, a little after the foundation of the
_Felibrige_ (May 21, 1854). _The Felibrige_ was a brotherhood of modern
Provencal poets, its purpose was to revive Provencal as a literary
language; the word _Felibrige_ is of unknown origin, it comes from an
obscure word found by Mistral in a Provencal text; the members of the
brotherhood, which later became a great literary society, were called
_felibres_; the brotherhood was originated by Roumanille, who was
followed by a more celebrated poet, Mistral, and five other poets,
Aubanel, Brunet, Camille Raybaud, Mathieu and Felix Gras. In regard to
the _Armana prouvencau_, the following quotation from an article by
Mistral in _Les Annales politiques et litteraires_, May 13, 1906, will
give an idea of the type of this Almanac: "Et sans parler ici des
innombrables poesies qui s'y sont publiees, sans parler de ses
Chroniques, ou est continue, peut-on dire, l'histoire du Felibrige,
la quantite de contes, de legendes, de sornettes, de faceties et de
gaudrioles, tous recueillis dans le terroir, qui s'y sont ramasses, font
de cette entreprise une collection unique. Toute la tradition, toute la
raillerie, tout l'esprit de notre race se trouvent serres la-dedans."
The dialects of France fall into two great classes: the _Langue d'oil_,
in the north, and the _Langue d'oc_, in the south (_oil_ is the old>
northern form for _oui, oc_ the southern form). The difference really
dates from Roman colonization, which occurred on the Mediterranean some
seventy-five years before Caesar conquered northern Gaul (59--5l B.C.).
Provencal is one of the principal dialects of the southern group; during
the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries (prior to the Albigensian
crusade) it was, at least in lyric poetry, the most important literary
language of France. Because of political and literary superiority, the
language of Paris, or of the Ile-de-France, became the general literary
language of France. The dialects, however, still live on, and Provencal
has, as described above, been somewhat revived as a literary language
by the efforts of Mistral and the other poets of the _Felibrige_. Many
scholars regard the characteristics of the territory embraced by the
modern departments of Loire, Rhone, Isere, Ain, Savoie, the old province
of Franche-Comte and a part of Switzerland as sufficient to form a third