Lo Boièr ("The Oxherd", also known as Le Bouvier in French) is an Occitan traditional song.
[1] It was popular in Languedoc during the Late Middle Ages, being particularly associated to the religious movement of Catharism.
[2] It might have developed during the Albigensian Crusade, when Cathar beliefs were declared forbidden.
It was also utilized by Radio Toulouse during World War II as a resistance song.
The third verse of every stanza is a mantric-sounding succession of vowels as a sort of refrain.
[5][6] The song's lyrics tells the story of an oxherd who finds his wife ill and tries to comfort her with food, which the woman replies to by serenely explaining the way she wants to be buried after she dies.
The meal mentioned contains a radish ("raba", in Occitan), a cabbage ("caulet") and a lean lark ("magra"), referencing the noble families of Rabastens, Caulet and Magrin, protectors of Catharism.
Finally, Joana asks to be buried with her head under the fountain, symbolizing the water received in the consolamentum, and mentions a herd of goats, echoing a Gnostic tradition that links Capricorn to the spirit's return to heaven.
[4] In Gnosticism, the vowels are considered a form of the name of the Monad, much like the Hebrew tetragrammaton.
Examples of this and similar vowel usage is found in the Nag Hamadi Library.
[8][9] Quand lo boièr ven de laurar (bis) Planta son agulhada A, e, i, ò, u!
Trapa (Tròba) sa femna al pè del fuòc (bis) Trista e (Tota) desconsolada.
In his 1998 novel Le Christi, René-Victor Pilhes mentions the song, interpreting its vowels as Austriae est imperare orbi universo.