We had started a little too late; Madame grew unwontedly fatigued and sat
down to rest on a stile before we had got half-way; and there she intoned,
with a dismal nasal cadence, a quaint old Bretagne ballad, about a lady
with a pig's head:--

'This lady was neither pig nor maid,
And so she was not of human mould;
Not of the living nor the dead.
Her left hand and foot were warm to touch;
Her right as cold as a corpse's flesh!
And she would sing like a funeral bell, with a ding-dong tune.
The pigs were afraid, and viewed her aloof;
And women feared her and stood afar.
She could do without sleep for a year and a day;
She could sleep like a corpse, for a month and more.
No one knew how this lady fed--
On acorns or on flesh.
Some say that she's one of the swine-possessed,
That swam over the sea of Gennesaret.
A mongrel body and demon soul.
Some say she's the wife of the Wandering Jew,
And broke the law for the sake of pork;
And a swinish face for a token doth bear,
That her shame is now, and her punishment coming.'

And so it went on, in a gingling rigmarole. The more anxious I seemed to go
on our way, the more likely was she to loiter. I therefore showed no signs
of impatience, and I saw her consult her watch in the course of her ugly
minstrelsy, and slyly glance, as if expecting something, in the direction
of our destination.