The Auvergne songs as arranged by le Bard d'Auvergne, Joseph Canteloube, are undeservedly obscure. Canteloube's romantic heart was dazzled by the songs he heard the shepherdesses singing in the Auvergne region, and singlehandedly sprung them on the wider world in his fetching arrangements. These were classical, not folk, but are irresistibly lovely anyway.

First on LP (I believe), and certainly among the loveliest, was folk songstress Susan Reed. She had a movie role and several 78 rpm albums to her credit in the late 1940s when she made her Carnegie Hall debut (in 1949?) with the Auvergne songs in Canteloube's versions. In 1950 she put out half a dozen of them, backed by a small orchestra, as one side of her Columbia 12" album "Songs of the Auvergne," the B side being folksongs accompanied with Irish harp and "ever-lovin'" (a chord zither similar to the autoharp).

In the 1970s Natania Devrath (Vanguard I think) was one of many who followed up with complete album of these beautiful songs. Sporadically over the years since, other artists have recorded them too, but they're still far from well known.

The most authentic versions I know of, shorn of the Canteloube arrangements, are on a Folkways album by Lucie de Vienne-Blanc, her strong, florid singing backed only by oboe, considerably more in the traditional Auvergne spirit.   Bob