Or the Song of the Sixth Companion

Scene: "En ce bourdeau où tenons nostre estat"

It being remembered that there were six of us with Master Villon, when
that expecting presently to be hanged he writ a ballad whereof ye know:

"Frères humains qui après nous vivez."

    Drink ye a skoal for the gallows tree!

François and Margot and thee and me,

Drink we the comrades merrily

That said us, "Till then" for the gallows tree!

    Fat Pierre with the hook gauche-main,

Thomas Larron "Ear-the-less,"

Tybalde and that armouress

Who gave this poignard its premier stain,

Pinning the Guise that had been fain

To make him a mate of the "Haulte Noblesse"

And bade her be out with ill address

As a fool that mocketh his drue's disdeign.

    Drink we a skoal for the gallows tree!

François and Margot and thee and me,

Drink we to Marienne Ydole,

That hell brenn not her o'er cruelly.

    Drink we the lusty robbers twain,

Black is the pitch o' their wedding dress,*

Lips shrunk back for the wind's caress

As lips shrink back when we feel the strain

Of love that loveth in hell's disdeign,

And sense the teeth through the lips that press

'Gainst our lips for the soul's distress

That striveth to ours across the pain.

    Drink we skoal for the gallows tree!

François and Margot and thee and me,

For Jehan and Raoul de Vallerie

Whose frames have the night and its winds in fee.

    Maturin, Guillaume, Jacques d'Allmain,

Culdou lacking a coat to bless

One lean moiety of his nakedness

That plundered St. Hubert back o' the fane:

Aie! the lean bare tree is widowed again

For Michault le Borgne that would confess

In "faith and troth" to a traitoress,

"Which of his brothers had he slain?"

    But drink we skoal to the gallows tree!

François and Margot and thee and me:

These that we loved shall God love less

And smite alway at their faibleness?

Skoal!! to the gallows! and then pray we:

God damn his hell out speedily

And bring their souls to his "Haulte Citee."

* Certain gibbeted corpses used to be coated with tar as a preservative; thus
one scarecrow served as warning for considerable time. See Hugo L'Homme qui Rit.