I was wandering about the house in the small hours when I came upon a book I have had for many years; Perles de la Poésie Française, the 7th edition published in 1906.
Idly opening it somewhere around the middle, I read the first verse of a poem called Les Paysans by André Theuriet and discovered a reference to the wild service tree in the last line:
Le village s’éveille à la corne du pâtre,
Les bêtes et les gens sortent de leur logis;
On les voit cheminer sous le brouillard bleuâtre,
Dans le frisson mouillé des alisiers rougis.
I have done a transliteration, trying to keep the feel of the original:
The whole village wakes to the shepherd's horn,
And the beasts and the people come out of their home places;
Under the blue tinted mist they move, weary and worn
Among the wet shiver of the autumn red sarveses.
I have used the dialect word 'sarveses' for 'alisiers' as 'services' is ambiguous without a wider context.
The poet, André Theuriet, seemed particularly keen on the alisier as illustrated in some of his novels (see my blog entry here for 14 January 2010).
