Thanks for posting that! I had forgotten that I had, indeed, heard of Villon before - parts of the Ballade des Pendus were quoted by Dorothy Sayers in, I think, Busman's Honeymoon (in the original French, of course - she is one of those authors who generally assumes her audience understands French and Latin, and therefore rarely bothers translating). The French in that ballad appears rather more archaic, though, than this one (or at least seemed to contain more words that had not quite finished their journey from Latin to French).

Catherine