Contre le tens qui desbrise
Yvers, et revient este,
Et la mauvis se desguise,
Qui de lonc tens n'a chante
Ferai chanson. Car a gre
Me vient que j'aie en pense
Amor, qui en moi s'est mise.
Bien m'a droit son dart gete.
 
 
Douce dame, de franchise,
N'ai je point en vos trove:
S'ele ne s'i est puis mise
Que je ne vos esgarde,
Trop avez vers moi fierte.
Mais ce fait vostre biaute,
Ou il n'i a pas de devise,
Tant en i a grand plante.
 
 
En moi n'a point d'astenance
Que je puisse aillors penser,
Pors que la, ou conoissance
Ne merci ne puis trover.
Bien fui fait por li amer;
Car ne m'en puis saoler.
Et quant plus aurai cheance,
Plus la me convendra douter.
 
 
D'une riens sui en doutance,
Que je ne puis plus celer,
Qu'en li n'ait un po d'enfance.
Ce me fait deconforter,
Que s'a moi a bon penser
Ne l'ose ele desmontrer.
Si feist qu'a sa semblance
Le poisse deviner.
 
 
Des que je li fis priere
Et la pris a esgarder,
Me fist amors la lumiere
Des iels par le cuer passer.
Cil conduit me fait grever:
Dont je ne me soi garder:
Ne ne puet torner arriere
Mon cuer; miex voudrait crever.
 
 
Dame, a vos m'estuet clamer,
Et que merci vos requiere.
Diex m'i laist pitie trover!
 

Minor Singers.

Adam de la Halle.

Besides Thibaut there are not a few other song writers of the thirteenth century, who rise out of the crowd named by M. Paulin Paris. Some of these, as might be expected, are famous for their achievements in other departments of literature. Such are Adam de la Halle, Jean Bodel, Guyot de Provins. There are, however, two, Gace Brulé and Colin Muset, who survive solely but worthily as song writers. Gace Brulé was a knight of Champagne, Colin Muset a professed minstrel. The former chiefly composed sentimental work; the latter, with the proverbial or professional gaiety of his class, drew nearer to the satirical tone of the Fabliau writers. His best-known and most usually quoted work describes the different welcome which he receives from his family on his return from professional tours, according to the success or ill-success with which he has met. Two other poets, Adam de la Halle and Rutebœuf, are far more prominent in literary history. Adam de la Halle⁷³ bore the surname 'Le Bossu d'Arras,' from his native town, though the term hunchback seems to have had no literal application to him. His exact date is not known, but it must probably have been from the fourth to the ninth decade of the thirteenth century. His dramatic works, which are of signal importance, will be noticed elsewhere. But besides these he has left some seventy or eighty lyrical pieces of one kind or another. Adam's life was not uneventful; he was at first a monk, but left his convent and married. Then he proved as faithless to his temporal as he had been to his spiritual vows. He lampooned his wife, his family, his townsmen, and, shaking the dust of Arras from his feet, retired first to Douai and then to the court of Robert of Artois, whom he accompanied to Italy. He died in that country about 1288. The style of Adam de la Halle varies from the coarsest satire to the most graceful tenderness. Of the latter the following song is a good specimen: —

 
Diex!
Comment porroie
Trouver voie
D'aler a chelui
Cui amiete je sui?
Chainturelle, va-i
En lieu de mi;
Car tu fus sieue aussi,
Si m'en conquerra miex.
 
 
Mais comment serai sans ti?
Dieus!
Chainturelle, mar vous vi;
Au deschaindre m'ochies;
De mes grietes a vous me confortoie,
Quant je vous sentoie,
Ai mi!
A le saveur de mon ami.
Ne pour quant d'autres en ai,
A cleus d'argent et de soie,
Pour men user.
Mais lasse! comment porroie
Sans cheli durer
Qui me tient en joie?
 
 
Canchonnete, chelui proie
Qui le m'envoya,
Puis que jou ne puis aler la.
Qu'il en viengne a moi,
Chi droit,
A jour failli,
Pour faire tous ses boins,
Et il m'orra,
Quant il ert joins,
Canter a haute vois:
Par chi va la mignotise,
Par chi ou je vois.
 

Rutebœuf

Rutebœuf (whose name appears to be a nickname only) has been more fortunate than most of the poets of early France in leaving a considerable and varied work behind him, and in having it well and collectively edited⁷⁴. Little or nothing, however, is known about him, except from allusions in his own verse. He was probably born about 1230; he was certainly married in 1260; there is no allusion in his poems to any event later than 1285. By birth he may have been either a Burgundian or a Parisian. His work which, as has been said, is not inconsiderable in volume, falls into three well-marked divisions in point of subject. The first consists of personal and of comic poems; the second of poems sometimes satirical, sometimes panegyrical, on public personages and events; the third, which is apparently with reason assigned to the latest period of his life, of devotional poems. In the first division La Pauvreté Rutebœuf, Le Mariage Rutebœuf, etc., are complaints of his woeful condition; complaints, however, in which there is nearly as much satire as appeal. Others, such as Renart le Bestourné, Le Dit des Cordeliers, Frère Denise, Le Dit de l'Erberie, are poems of the Fabliau kind. In all these there are many lively strokes of satire, and not a little of the reckless gaiety, chequered here and there with deeper feeling, which has always been a characteristic of a certain number of French poets. Rutebœuf's sarcasm is especially directed towards the monastic orders. The second class of poems, which is numerous, displays a more elevated strain of thought. Many of these poems are complaintes or elaborate elegies (often composed on commission) for distinguished persons, such as Geoffroy de Sargines and Guillaume de Saint Amour. Others, such as the Complainte d'Outremer, the Complainte de Constantinople, the Dit de la Voie de Tunes, the Débat du Croisé et du Décroisé, are comments on the politics and history of the time, for the most part strongly in favour of the crusading spirit, and reproaching the nobility of France with their degeneracy. 'Mort sont Ogier et Charlemagne' is an often-quoted exclamation of Rutebœuf in this sense. The third class includes La Mort Rutebœuf, otherwise La Repentance Rutebœuf, La Voie de Paradis, various poems to the Virgin, the lives of St. Mary of Egypt and St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and the miracle play of Théophile. Rutebœuf's favourite metres are either the continuous octosyllabic couplet, or else a stanza composed of an octosyllabic couplet and a line of four syllables, the termination of the latter being caught up by the succeeding couplet. In this the Mariage is written, of which a specimen may be given: —

 
En l'an de l'incarnacïon,
VIII jors aprés la nascïon
Jhesu qui soufri passïon,
en l'an soissante,
qu'arbres n'a foille, oisel ne chante,
fis je toute la rien dolante
que de cuer m'aime:
nis li musarz musart me claime.
or puis filer, qu'il me faut traime;
mult ai a faire.
deus ne fist cuer tant de pute aire,
tant li aie fait de contraire
ne de martire,
s'il en mon martire se mire,
qui ne doie de bon cuer dire
'je te claim cuite.'
envoier un home en Egypte,
ceste dolor est plus petite
que n'est la moie;
je n'en puis mais se je m'esmoie.
l'en dit que fous qui ne foloie
pert sa saison:
sui je marïez sanz raison?
or n'ai ne borde ne maison.
encor plus fort:
por plus doner de reconfort
a ceus qui me heent de mort,
tel fame ai prise
que nus fors moi n'aime ne prise,
et s'estoit povre et entreprise,
quant je la pris.
a ci marïage de pris,
c'or sui povres et entrepris
ausi comme ele,
et si n'est pas gente ne bele.
cinquante anz a en s'escuële,
s'est maigre et seche:
n'ai pas paor qu'ele me treche.
despuis que fu nez en la greche
deus de Marie,
ne fu mais tele espouserie.
je sui toz plains d'envoiserie:
bien pert a l'uevre.
 

Though he has less of the 'lyrical cry' than some others, Rutebœuf is perhaps the most vigorous poet of his time.

Lais. Marie de France.

There is one division of early poetry which may also be noticed under this head, though it is sometimes dealt with as a kind of miniature epic. This is the lai, a term which is used in old French poetry with two different significations. The Trouvères of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries made of it a regular lyrical form. But the most famous of its examples, those which now pass under the name of Marie de France, are narrative poems in octosyllabic verse and varying in length considerably. It is agreed that the term and the thing are of Breton origin; and the opinion which seems most probable is that the word originally had reference rather to the style of music with which the harper accompanied his verse, than to the measure, arrangement, or subject of the latter. As to Marie herself⁷⁵, nothing is known about her with certainty. She lived in England in the reign of Henry III, and often gives English equivalents for her French words. The lais which we possess, written by her and attributed to her, are fourteen in number. They bear the titles of Gugemer, Equitan, Le Fresne, Le Bisclaveret, Lanval, Les Deux Amants, Ywenec, Le Laustic, Milun, Le Chaitivel, Le Chèvrefeuille, Eliduc, Graalent and L'Espine. Mr. O'Shaughnessy has paraphrased several of these in English⁷⁶; they are all narrative in character. Their distinguishing features are fluent and melodious versification, pure and graceful language – among the purest and most graceful, though decidedly Norman in character, of the time – true poetical feeling, and a lively faculty of invention and description. After Marie there was a tendency to approximate the lai to the Provençal descort, and at last, as we have said, it acquired rules and a form quite alien from those of its earlier examples. There is a general though not a universal inclination to melancholy of subject in the early lays, a few of which are anonymous.

Note to Third Edition.– M. Gaston Paris has expressed some surprise at my remarks on metre (p. 63). This from so accomplished a scholar is a curious instance of the difficulty which Frenchmen seem to feel in appreciating quantity. To an English eye and ear which have been trained to classical prosody the trochaic rhythm of, for instance, the Pastourelle quoted on p. 65, is unmistakable, and there are anapaestic metres to be found here and there in early poems of the same kind. Indeed, all French poetry is easily scanned quantitatively, though the usual authorities protest against such scansion. Voltaire, it is said, took Turgot's hexameters for prose, and the significance of this is the same whether the mistake, as is probable, was mischievous or whether it was genuine.