I am not sure how cardboard shepherds procreate, but romance is their favourite pastoral pastime. Actually both sexes are quite "possessive" - a property which has fallen in disgrace only since late 20th century. "Give him back to me!" says it all. (Does she think/feel the villa[t]gers hold the boy prisoner??)

The topic of love poetry is often the very essence of love, deliberately "purified" of any rationality, to make it look stronger. Known examples go back to the Canticles of the Bible (Cant3.3: "The watchmen that go about the city found me. 'Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?'") and do not end with "The Most Beautiful Girl" mentioned above.

The pastoral/rural genre goes back (at least) to ancient Greek and Latin. The idea, still in vogue, is "Oh, if we were not as sophisticated as we are, but as simple as countryfolk, we would live in harmony with our inner self and thus be happier!" Needless to say that the real countryfolk were not convinced.

Those who are grateful to Florian for using Occitan in this connection, may be mistaken: the suggestion to his readers could well have been that Occitan-speakers ("natives") actually are naive, where French-speakers must affect it. Even those readers who are envious, will not really be respectful. If Florian had wanted to raise the prestige of modern Occitan, he could have been more successful by connecting it to medieval poetic Provençal, which was as "affected" and prestigeous a language as poetic French. --

Alas, Sanjay, Gillington's version is a sore abuse of Godard's melody, and Tauber makes it even worse. Transgendering is not the problem, and the pastoral topic is superficially preserved, but the typical languishing (not primarily "sorrow of separation") of the late-19th-century music is betrayed.