Note 11 — Chapter XII · FONT-SEGUGNE

Monsieur Paul Mariéton in his “Terre Provençale” says of this work: “The history of a people is contained in this book. No one can ever know what devotion, knowledge, discrimination and intuition such a work represents, undertaken and concluded as it was during the twenty best years of a poet’s life. All the words of the Oc language in its seven different dialects, each one compared with its equivalent in the Latin tongue, all the proverbs and idioms of the South together with every characteristic expression either in use or long since out of vogue, make up this incomparable Thesaurus of a tenacious language, which is no more dead to-day than it was three hundred years ago, and which is now reconquering the hearts of all the faithful.” This “Treasury of the Félibres” opens with the following lines:

“O people of the South, hearken now to my words:

“If thou would’st regain the lost Empire of thy speech and equip thyself anew, dig deep in this mine.”