Always, from the remotest times, when the children joined hands and danced around the Fairy Tree they sang a song which was the Tree’s song, the song of L’Arbre fee de Bourlemont.  They sang it to a quaint sweet air—­a solacing sweet air which has gone murmuring through my dreaming spirit all my life when I was weary and troubled, resting me and carrying me through night and distance home again.  No stranger can know or feel what that song has been, through the drifting centuries, to exiled Children of the Tree, homeless and heavy of heart in countries foreign to their speech and ways.  You will think it a simple thing, that song, and poor, perchance; but if you will remember what it was to us, and what it brought before our eyes when it floated through our memories, then you will respect it.  And you will understand how the water wells up in our eyes and makes all things dim, and our voices break and we cannot sing the last lines: 

“And when, in Exile wand’ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee, Oh, rise upon our sight!”

And you will remember that Joan of Arc sang this song with us around the Tree when she was a little child, and always loved it.  And that hallows it, yes, you will grant that: 

     L’ARBRE fee de Bourlemont

     Song of the children

     Now what has kept your leaves so green,
     Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?

     The children’s tears!  They brought each grief,
     And you did comfort them and cheer
     Their bruised hearts, and steal a tear
     That, healed, rose a leaf.

     And what has built you up so strong,
     Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?

     The children’s love!  They’ve loved you long
     Ten hundred years, in sooth,
     They’ve nourished you with praise and song,
     And warmed your heart and kept it young—­
     A thousand years of youth!

     Bide always green in our young hearts,
     Arbre Fee de Bourlemont! 
     And we shall always youthful be,
     Not heeding Time his flight;
     And when, in exile wand’ring, we
     Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
     Oh, rise upon our sight!

The fairies were still there when we were children, but we never saw them; because, a hundred years before that, the priest of Domremy had held a religious function under the tree and denounced them as being blood-kin to the Fiend and barred them from redemption; and then he warned them never to show themselves again, nor hang any more immortelles, on pain of perpetual banishment from that parish.

All the children pleaded for the fairies, and said they were their good friends and dear to them and never did them any harm, but the priest would not listen, and said it was sin and shame to have such friends.  The children mourned and could not be comforted; and they made an agreement among themselves that they would always continue to hang flower-wreaths on the tree as a perpetual sign to the fairies that they were still loved and remembered, though lost to sight.