The troubadours

[1] Even the oldest Provençal poem of importance known to us, a popular version of the story of Boethius, belonging, according to Raynouard, to the tenth century, shows in most essential points the same grammatical structure as the language of the Troubadours, barring such irregularities and archaisms as are fully accounted for by the age and origin of the work.

[2] The religious poems of the Vaudois, especially the celebrated ‘Noble Lesson,’ a medley of moral and dogmatic precepts, do not concern us, they being both by language and tendency entirely removed from the sphere of artistic literature.

[3] A curious collection of all imaginable law cases, called ‘Albres de Batalhas,’ or ‘Tree of Contention,’ and written most likely originally in French, may be mentioned as throwing a curious though faint light on a recent controversy. One of the fictitious actions is between a Frenchman and a licentiate of London who has come to Paris to take his degree in the celebrated university of that city, a case of frequent occurrence, although ‘as every one knows the Kings of France and England are always at war with each other.’ In answer to some argument of the Englishman his antagonist exclaims in his boisterous way: ‘We Frenchmen don’t care about your laws or the emperor who made them.’ What better precedent could the advocates of Queen Victoria’s new title demand than this testimony of an enemy, who curiously enough speaks of his own monarch as the king?

[4] In one passage, it is true, he uses the words, ‘que ay escrichas questas razos,’ ‘I who have written these things,’ but that may be a shorter way for saying ‘dictated,’ which the expression in the text evidently indicates.

[5] In the second-mentioned poem the instruction takes the whimsical form of a reproof to a joglar for not knowing the various subjects mentioned in the text. ‘I will tell you the truth without a lie,’ the ingenuous poet opens his diatribe; ‘you are a bad fiddler and worse singer from beginning to end.’

[6] Pulci says that Angelo Poliziano called his attention to Arnaut’s work, in acknowledgment evidently of what he considered a remarkable antiquarian achievement.

[7] ‘Galahalt’ was the go-between of the Queen and her lover. The word became nationalised in Italian as equivalent to ‘Pandar.’

[8] This kind of personal apprenticeship to a renowned troubadour, be it here parenthetically stated, was, in the good times, the common way of acquiring the complicated and difficult art of poetry. Other poets taught themselves with the assistance of the great models preserved in writing, or transmitted by word of mouth and sound of voice or fiddle. Jaufre Rudel says prettily, that meadows and orchards, trees and flowers, and the cries and songs of wild birds have been his teachers. The ‘Academies,’ i.e. teaching and examining bodies, were, like the schools of the German master singers, creations of a late epoch.

[9] M. Damase Arbaud some time ago published a charming collection of popular ditties (‘Chants Populaires de Provence,’ Aix, 1862), containing amongst other pieces some beautiful Christmas songs or noëls evidently of great antiquity, although still sung in Provence. Some of these poems, the editor believes, date back from the times of the Troubadours. But the oral tradition to which they owe their preservation has unfortunately changed their linguistic character beyond recognition.

[10] The senhal or pseudonym of his lady-love.

[11] Songs of dispute or contention.

[12] ‘The other day by the roadside I heard a shepherd sing a song, which said: “False traitors have killed me.” And when he saw me approach, he jumped to his feet to do me honour and said, ‘God be with you, sir; for now I have found a friend, leal and discreet and without falsehood to whom I may complain of love.’

[13] A curious exception to this rule occurs in a balada published by Professor Bartsch from a Paris manuscript. It is evidently written in imitation of a popular model, and differs in toto from the spirit and diction of the poetry of the Troubadours, with which it has nothing in common but the language. Here we have a refrain of purely musical significance at the end of some of the lines, and also the exclamation of the dancers referred to in the text. Here also, curiously enough, the words take a narrative turn, thus seeming to foreshadow the gradual transition of the term ballad from its old to its modern meaning. A stanza may follow here:—

(‘At the beginning of the bright season, eya, in order to begin again joy, eya, and to irritate the jealous, eya, the queen resolves to show how amorous she is. Away, away, ye jealous, let us, let us, dance by ourselves, by ourselves’).

[14] An article in the Cornhill Magazine (July 1877), called a ‘Plea for certain Exotic Forms of Verse,’ may be consulted with advantage, as regards the adoption of these French metres by some modern English poets. For modern French poetry, that charming volume ‘Petit Traité de Poésie,’ by Théodore de Banville, is the chief source. Of the mediæval development of his own language and the langue d’oc M. de Banville unfortunately says little or nothing. Villon seems the earliest author known to him. Rutebœuf he ignores.

[15] According to the Leys d’amors, this choice of one of two arguments proposed by one troubadour to another, is the characteristic feature of the partimen in distinction from the tenso generally.

[16] A notorious freebooter of the time.

[17] Attacks on the morals of the clergy are frequent in Provençal literature; but of poems containing heretical opinions in matters of dogma I know only one, by Peire Cardinal. It is a passionate plea against the eternity of punishment, and might have been quoted with advantage in a recent ecclesiastical trial. It is, however, by no means unlikely that other poems of heterodox import may have been accidentally or wilfully destroyed in the course of ages. The fact that a bull of Pope Innocent IV., dated 1245, prohibits to students the use of Provençal, as a language of heretics, tends to confirm this surmise.

[18] This poem may be found in Bartsch’s ‘Chrestomathie Provençale,’ 2nd edition, p. 55.

[19] The exact meaning of the word sirventes is not easy to define. It is evidently derived from the Latin verb servire, and may therefore loosely be rendered as the ‘song of a serving-man in praise or in the interest of his master.’ The Leys d’amors calls the sirventes ‘a song which contains censure and vituperation, and castigates wicked and malignant people.’ This tolerably meets the case. The use of the word by later grammarians for a song in praise of the Virgin is a manifest corruption of its original meaning.

[20] The characteristic change between plural and singular in the lady’s address to Guillem adds greatly to the impressiveness of the original. Here, for instance, she says, ‘Eram digaz (Tell you me), t’es tu anquera (hast thou found out),’ etc.

[21] See the interlinear version of it; Index, ii.

[22] Another biographer adds with ghastly accuracy, ‘a pebrada,’ with pepper—‘devilled,’ as we should say.

[23] Some readers may care to know the whole passage referring to our troubadour, one of the most weird and impressive of the ‘Inferno.’ It occurs in the 28th Canto towards the close, and runs thus:—

[24] I must warn the reader not to mistake the above lines for an attempt at rendering a somewhat similar war-song generally ascribed to Bertran de Born, and translated into English as one of his poems. It is the magnificent sirventes beginning ‘Bem platz lo gais temps de pascor’ (Well I love the gay time of spring), and so much is it in the spirit of our troubadour that even one of the old manuscripts has his name affixed to it. Unfortunately, however, the evidence of numerous other and better manuscripts is against this plausible surmise, and by their authority the poem must be ascribed to William de St. Gregory, a troubadour comparatively little known.

[25] ‘First among all, Arnaut Daniel, the great master of love, who still does honour to his country by his new and beautiful parlance.’

[26] Owing to the noble protection granted to the remnants of the old Waldenses in the valleys of the Cottonian Alps by Cromwell, and continued by subsequent English governments, till the full emancipation of the sect by King Charles Albert in 1848, their history and doctrines have excited a great deal of interest in this country. A rich and valuable literature on the subject exists in our language, disfigured only by the desire, on the part of theologians, to absolutely identify the original doctrine of the Vaudois with that of the Protestant reformers. This kind of retrospective propagandism may have been useful in the days of the Commonwealth to raise Puritan sympathy for oppressed fellow Protestants, but surely is out of place in our critical times. The works by Blair, Faber, Gilly, Allix, and others are well known. The reader’s attention is called to an interesting volume by Dr. Todd, containing a description of the Waldensian manuscripts in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, also reprints of articles by the late Hon. Algernon Herbert, Dr. Gilly, and other authors, on the Waldenses and their representative poem, the ‘Noble Lesson.’ Here also will be found a curious account of the re-discovery of certain interesting MSS., brought over to England by Morland, Cromwell’s envoy to the Duke of Savoy, and deposited by him in the library of Cambridge University. They were long supposed to have disappeared, but were ultimately found by Mr. H. Bradshaw, the accomplished scholar, in 1862, on the identical shelf where Morland had deposited them. The possibility of this strange neglect Mr. Bradshaw explains from the fact that ‘the history of the MSS. was lost sight of, and they had come to be regarded as miscellaneous pieces, apparently in Spanish.’ The italicised suggestion reveals a beautiful development of modern philology at Cambridge. Does that state of things continue at the present day? What reason is there to believe the contrary, or what chance of improvement?

[27] The great value of this MS., which is on parchment, and in perfect condition, is proved by a curious endorsement on the last page, dated 1336, to the effect that one Jordan Capella obtained on it a loan of fifteen ‘livres tournois,’ by no means an inconsiderable sum in those days.

[28] The poem is written in tirades, or paragraphs of varying lengths, bound together by the same rhyme. At the end of each tirade there is a short line which, in the second portion of the poem, is, as a rule, literally repeated in the first line of the following tirade, while in the first part it only anticipates its rhyme. This difference is the chief metrical evidence against the one-author theory.

[29] The degree of nobility between the Viscount and the simple Baron.

[30] Grave doubts have recently been thrown on the authenticity of this poem. Into these I cannot enter here. But it seems strange that the bearing of the reality or fictitiousness of the ‘courts of love’ on the mooted point should have been entirely overlooked. Chaucer’s visit to France (1359) coincides with the time when amateur judges and juries deciding questions of gallantry were all the rage, and these might very well have suggested to him the symbolical machinery of the poem. But of course the intrinsic probability of Chaucer having written a poem on the ‘Court of Love’ does not amount to much compared with the philological arguments of Mr. Skeat (see ‘Athenæum,’ November 4, 1876). At the same time it seems surprising that neither he nor Mr. Furnivall is apparently acquainted with the historical controversy on the point, in spite of Diez’s admirable work, and of the paper I wrote on the subject in a monthly periodical. If this is true of scholars, what can be expected of the general reader? At this rate the ‘courts of love’ may protract their spurious existence for another century or so—in England at least.

[31] The reader interested in these matters may find some account of Andreas’ book in the pretty little edition of Chaucer for which Mr. Robert Bell is responsible (vol. iv. pp. 116 et passim). All the absurd stories of the Chaplain the ingenuous editor accepts as gospel truth. Queen Eleanor, Richard Cœur de Lion, and other worthies are named as the presidents of these amorous parliaments, of which the world knew nothing till hundreds of years after their deaths. Several of the arrêts d’amour are quoted, and the power of the court is said to have extended even to the assessing of pecuniary damages and the inflicting of corporal punishment. This naïveté is the more touching on Mr. Bell’s part, as, unlike Mr. Furnivall and Mr. Skeat, he is acquainted with Diez’s pamphlet. But his faith is proof against the most trenchant criticism.

[32] Westphal, Fragmente und Lehrsätze der griechischen Rhythmiker, pp. 14, 101.

[33] Sat. 1. i. 28.

[34] Ars Poet. 99.

[35] Ars Poet. 139.

[36] Epist. 1. xiv. 7.

[37] The stanza of the Sestina, as we know, both Dante and Petrarch took from Arnaut Daniel, whom the latter calls—

[38] Opere Minori, ed. Fraticelli, ii. 212.

[39] In this, as in all other cases, the expression of the ‘Leys d’Amors’ has been used in measuring verses, which, besides being more appropriate for the langue d’oc, seems also the more logical.

[40] Clarratz is evidently a mistake; very likely it should be read clartatz = clarté.

[41] Dieresis probably, where it occurs in this treatise, is always a misreading for diesis, which is the proper term for what Dante means.

[42] Canzoniere, ed. Giuliani, p. 227.

[43] The meaning of the word coda in modern music is not exactly the same as the one here given by Dante, but might well be derived from it.