| Citation |
GG(J.767.018
8 Jul 1767:32 (198)
The Affectionate Wife and Heroick Daughter
Now a days, when a Princess enters in the fifth month of her
pregnancy, physicians, surgeons, and men midwives assume the
direction of her health; she is scarce allowed to go out of
her apartment, in the easiest carriage. . . [story follows
of Jean of Albret, mother of Henry IV, who crossed France to
Berne in her ninth month at her father's request. She asked
for a gold chain and he promised it:] "I give thee my word
the whole shall be thine, provided that whilst thou art in
labour, thou singest me a Berne song, and I will be at thy
delivery."
Between midnight and one o'clock, on the 13th of December,
1553, the Princess's pain came on: Her father, on notice,
hastened down, and she hearing him come into the room,
chanted out the old Berne lay:
Notre dame du bout du pont
Aidez moi en cette heure, &c.
Immediately after her delivery, her father put the gold
chain about her neck . . . [and took the child and brought
him up.]
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