When there a few years ago, I was drawn by the sound of a fife and a drum to the spot where a dance of this sort was going on.

It was beyond the suspension bridge over the Garonne, a little to the south of Agen.

A number of men and women of the working-class were assembled on the grassy sward, and were dancing, whirling, and pirouetting to their hearts' content.
Sometimes the girls bounded from the circle, were followed by their sweethearts, and kissed.

It reminded one of the dance so vigorously depicted by Jasmin in Franconnette.
{4} Miss Harriet Preston, of Boston, U.S., published part of a translation of Franconnette in the 'Atlantic Monthly' for February, 1876, and adds the following note: "The buscou, or busking, was a kind of bee, at which the young people assembled, bringing the thread of their late spinning, which was divided into skeins of the proper size by a broad and thin plate of steel or whalebone called a busc.

The same thing, under precisely the same name, figured in the toilets of our grandmothers, and hence, probably, the Scotch use of the verb to busk, or attire." {5} Miss Louisa Stuart Costello in 'Bearn and the Pyrenees.' {6} A custom which then existed in certain parts of France.