plain of Maillane, in and about the town of Saint-Rémy. This dialect is
one of the numerous divisions of the _langue d'oc_, which Mistral claims
is spoken by nearly twelve millions of people. The literary history of
these patois has been written by B. Noulet, and shows that at the close
of the terrible struggles of the Albigenses the language seemed dead. In
1324 seven poets attempted to found at Toulouse the competitions of the
_Gai Savoir_, and so to revive the ancient poetry and the ancient
language. Their attempt failed. There was literary production of varying
degree of merit throughout two or three centuries; but until the time of
Jasmin no writer attracted any attention beyond his immediate vicinity;
and it is significant that the Félibres themselves were long in
ignorance of Jasmin. It is then not difficult to demonstrate that the
Félibrige revival bears more the character of a creation than of an
evolution. It is not at all an evolution of the literature of the
Troubadours; it is in no way like it. The language of the Félibres is
not even the descendant of the special dialect that dominated as a
literary language in the days of the Troubadours; for it was the speech
of Limousin that formed the basis of that language, and only two of the
greater poets among the Troubadours, Raimond de Vaqueiras and Fouquet de
Marseille, were natives of Provence proper.

The dialect of Saint-Rémy is simply one of countless ramifications of
the dialects descended from the Latin. Mistral and his associates have
made their literary language out of this dialect as they found it, and
not out of the language of the Troubadours. They have regularized the
spelling, and have deliberately eliminated as far as possible words and
forms that appeared to them to be due to French influence, substituting
older and more genuine forms--forms that appeared more in accord with
the genius of the _langue d'oc_ as contrasted with the _langue d'oil_.
Thus, _glòri_, _istòri_, _paire_, replace _gloaro_, _istouèro_, _pèro_,