The Songs of the Troubadours

PASSING by the names of Gui d’ Visel, who bore a part in some rather spirited tensons, or poetical dialogues, yet extant, but whose other poems are deficient in tenderness and grace; of Gaucelm Faidit, of whom the record says that " he went about the world for twenty years without making either himself or his songs acceptable; ” of Peire Roger and Peirol, we come to those of the two Arnauts, Arnaut Daniel and Arnaut de Maroill, or Marveil. To Arnaut Daniel was awarded, within a century after his death, distinguished praise by both Dante and Petrarch. Dante describes, in the twenty-sixth canto of the Purgatorio, a meeting with him in the shades; and Petrarch, speaking of him and Arnaut de Maroill, calls the latter “ the less famous Arnaut.” Judging by those of their remains which we possess, the distinction seems a very strange one. The verses of Arnaut Daniel are chiefly remarkable for an extraordinary ingenuity and complexity in the arrangement of their rhymes, for verbal conceits which are necessarily

untranslatable, and for the first introduction into the Romance rhythm of a sort of verbal echo, which was afterwards much more skillfully managed by Raimon de Miraval. But the modest beauties of Arnaut de Maroill’s verse are at least of a universal and enduring kind. This is his Story: “ Arnaut de Maruelh was of the bishopric of Peiragore, of a castel [that is, a castle domain] named Maruelh, a clerk, and lowly born. And because he could not live on his letters [a difficulty not confined to Provence and the twelfth century], he traveled about the world, and he knew how to find, and was very skillful. And his stars led him to the court of the Countess of Burlas, a daughter of the celebrated Count Raymond,¹ and wife of that Viscount of Beziers who was surnamed Taillefer. This Arnaut sang well and was a good reader of romance. He was handsome, too, and the countess distinguished him greatly. So he became enamored of her and made songs about her, but dared not communicate them to her, wherefore he said that others had made them. But love compelled him, as he says in one song: —

‘ The frank bearing which I cannot forget,’etc.

This was the song in which he discovered his love. And the countess did not repulse him, but heard his prayer and encouraged him, for she put him in armor and gave him the honor of singing and finding for her. So he was a man esteemed at court. Then made he many good songs by which we judge that he had great sorrow and great joy.

“ You have heard how Arnaut came to love the Countess of Burlas, the daughter of the brave Count Raymond, and mother of that Viscount de Beziers whom the French slew when they took Carcassonne.² The viscountess was called de Burlas, because she was born in the castle of Burlas. She liked Arnaut well, and King Alphonse (of Castile), who also had designs upon her, perceived her kindness for the troubadour. And the king was extremely jealous; ... so he accused her concerning Arnaut, and said so much and made her say so much that she gave Arnaut his dismissal, and forbade him to come into her presence any more, or to sing of her. When Arnaut received his congé, he was sorrowful above all sorrow, and went away from her and her court like a man in despair. He went to William of Montpellier, who was his friend and seignior, and stayed with him a great while; and there he plained and wept, and made that song which says: —

' Mot eran clous miei cossir.'”

We know the date of the Viscount de Beziers’ marriage to Adelaide de Burlas (1171), and from this we infer the principal dates of Arnaut’s history. He was certainly the contemporary of William of Cahestaing, and may well have heard from his own lips the later songs of Bernard of Ventadour, the best of which are hardly sweeter than this of Arnaut’s: —

There is a very long poem of Arnaut’s in simple consecutive rhymes, in which the praises of the fair countess are prettily if somewhat monotonously chanted, and the palm is awarded her over a long list of heroines, whose names, however incongruous, betray some acquaintance with literature on our troubadour’s part. Rodocesta and Bibles, Blanchefleur and Semiramis, Thisbe, Leda, and Helen, Antigone, Ismene, and Iseult. And here is that final and fruitless plaint quoted by Arnaut’s biographer: —

It would be an interesting if not edifying study in the manners of the time, to consider minutely the long story of Raimon do Miraval’s adventures. One of his early biographers remarks with charming simplicity that he “ loved a great many ladies, some of whom treated him well, and others ill. Some deceived him, and to these he rendered like for like; but he never deceived honest and loyal ladies.” It is also true that he was a favorite with famous and gallant princes, such as Peter II. of Aragon and Raymond Roger, before mentioned, the heroic defender of the Albigenses; and that these princes vied with one another in heaping upon the troubadour presents of rich robes and steeds and accoutrements of war; whereby the beggarly cavalier who had inherited only the fourth part of a small estate was enabled to make a splendid appearance in the world. Nevertheless, although personally brave, he seems not to have been a man of generous nature, and tlie songs which he has left, though graceful sometimes and very remarkable for their technical ingenuity, show few traces of genuine feeling. Raimon de Miraval’s first mistress was the notorious Loba de Penautier, the wife of a wealthy lord of Carbarés, of whom — that is, of Loba—we shall hear more in connection with Peire Vidal. The fervor and sincerity of the relations of these two may be guessed from the fact that Loba, who was besieged by numerous lovers, made a feint of encouraging Raimon, because she wished to conceal her real passion for the Count de Foix, also honorably memorable for the part he bore in the religious wars. " For,” observes the historian, with the same incredible naïveté as before, “ a lady was considered lost who openly accepted a powerful baron as her lover. ” Raimon seems to have continued his formal homage for some little time after he perfectly understood the state of the case between Loba and de Foix. But at last he wearied of the game, as our readers would certainly weary, were we to attempt giving them anything like a circumstantial account, or even a complete list, of the poet’s numerous affaires. We pass directly from his first “ attachment ” to his last, the object of which was also a lady of Carbarés, apparently a younger sister-in-law of Loba, one who herself made some unusual advances to the troubadour. The sport of these two experienced lovers was interrupted in 1208 by the opening of the crusade against the Albigenses, that crudest of religious wars, in which the early Provencal poetry virtually received its deathblow. Raimon de Miraval was shut up with the Count of Toulouse in the capital of the latter, while Beziers and Carcassonne fell before the onslaught of Simon de Montfort. Thence, when Peter II. of Aragon had come to their assistance, he addressed to the Spanish prince some animated verses, foretelling that, if successful, he would make his name as terrible to the French as it had hitherto been to the Saracens. But Peter fell in the battle of Muret, on the 12th of September, 1213, and Raimon followed the flight into Aragon of the counts of Toulouse and Foix, and there died not long after in a monastery at Lerida. We have attempted in the paraphrase which follows to give some idea of the mechanical complexity of Raimon’s versification, and of the verbal or syllabic echo, spoken of before, which Arnaut Daniel had introduced.

This is enough. We have just managed to hint at the labored quaintness of the verse. But that peculiarity of rhythm which we have called an echo should have, and very likely did have, a name of its own. There is a hackneyed yet unspoiled strain of melody in the death scene in Lucia, of which the effect upon the ear is almost precisely similar to this in the Provençal.

It would be unfair to the reader to transcribe otherwise than literally the manuscript biography of the absurdest of men and troubadours, Peire Vidal. Thus it runs: “ Peire Vidal was of Toulouse, the son of a tanner. He was the best singer in the world, and a good finder; and he was the most foolish man in the world, because he thought everything tiresome except verse. . . . He said much evil of others, and made some verses for which a cavalier de San Gill had his tongue cut, because he proclaimed himseif the accepted lover of San Gilis wife. But Oc del.Baux treated the wound and cured him. So when he was healed, he went away beyond the sea and brought thence a Greek woman whom he had married in Cyprus. And she gave him to understand that she was the granddaughter of the Emperor of Constantinople, and that through her he ought by rights to have the empire. Wherefore he put all his substance into a navy, because he intended to go and conquer the empire; and he assumed the imperial arms and had himself called emperor and his wife empress. He courted all the fine ladies he saw, and besought them for their love, and talked Oc to them, for he deemed himself a universal lover, and that any one would die for him. And he always had fine horses and armor and an imperial chair (or throne), and thought he was the best knight in the world and the most loved of ladies. Peire Vidal, as I have said, courted all fine ladies; . . . and among others he courted ray lady Adelaide, the wife of Barral, the lord of Marseilles . . . and Barral knew it well; ... So there came a day when Peire Vidal knew that Barral was away and the lady alone in her chamber, and he went in and found her sleeping, and kneeled down and kissed her lips. Feeling the kiss and thinking that it was Lord Barral, she started up, smiling, then looked and saw that it was that fool of a Peire Vidal (e vi lo fol de Peire Vidal), and began to make a great outcry. Her women rushed in, crying, ‘ What is this? ' And Peire Vidal fled. Then the lady sent for Lord Barral, and loudly complained of Peire for kissing her, and wept, an prayed that he might be punished. Then Lord Barral, like a brave man, made light of the thing, and reproved his wife for her distress. . . . But Peire Vidal was frightened, and took ship for Genoa, where he remained until he went over-seas with King Richard. . . . He remained a long time in foreign parts, not daring to return to Provence until Lord Barral, who was well-disposed toward him, as you have heard, prayed his wife to pardon the kiss and make him (Peire) a present of it. So Barral sent Peire his wife’s good wishes and ordered him to return. And back he came with the greatest rejoicing to Marseilles, and was well received by everybody, and everything was forgiven him, wherefore Peire made the famous song,—

‘ Pos tornat soi en Proensa.’

. . . [Afterwards] he fell in love with Loba de Penautier, and with Madame Stephania, of Sardinia, and with Lady Raimbauda de Biolh. Loba was of Carbarès, and out of compliment to her Peire Vidal had himself called Wolf, and wore a wolf on his arms. And he caused himself to be hunted in the mountains of Carbares with dogs and mastiffs and everets, as wolves are hunted, and he vore a wolf-skin to give himself the appearance of a wolf. And the shepherds with their dogs hunted him aud abused him so, that he was carried for dead to the inn of Loba de Penautier. As soon as she knew that it was Peire Vidal, she began to scoff at him for his folly, and her husband likewise, and they received him with great merriment. But her husband had him taken and conveyed to a retired place, and did the best he could with him and kept him till he was well.”

Happily the craze of Peire appears chiefly in his actions, and many of his verses are unusually sane and elegant. We give the song mentioned above as addressed to Adelaide on his return to Marseilles. The grace and good-nature of the original sufficed, no doubt, to atone for its undeniably saucy and perfunctory air. It is also interesting from the allusion in the sixth verse — which is the fifth in Raynouard’s text — to the fancied return of King Arthur, either in the person of Cœcur de Lion himself, in whose train Peire went to the Holy Land, or, more probably, in that of his presumptive heir, Arthur of Brittany, the victim of John.

Once more, in the case of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, we are fain to throw aside all attempt at critical examination and selection, and simply quote the text of the early biographer. The reader will please compare the manner of telling the tale of the mantle with the similar incident of the sword and circlet in the story of Pelleas and Etard or Etarre, so solemnly and touchingly rehearsed by Tennyson in the eighth idyl of the complete edition. It will furnish him once for all with a measure of the strange difference in native moral sense between the races who cultivated the troubadour and the trouver poetry.

“ Raimbaut de Vaqueiras was the son of a poor cavalier of Provence, of the Castle of Vaqueiras. And Raimbaut became a jongleur and was a long while with the Prince of Orange, William of Baux. He was skilled in singing and in making couplets and sirventes, and the Prince of Orange did him great honor and favors for it, and made him to be generally known and praised. Yet Raimbaut left him (the Prince of Orange) and went to the Marquis Boniface of Montferrat, and was long established at his court also. And be grew in wit and wisdom and soldierly accomplishments, and became enamored of the marquis’s sister, ray lady Beatrice, the wife of Henry of Carret, and found many good songs about her, and it was thought that she was favorably disposed toward him. Now you have heard who Raimbaut was, and how he came to honor, and by whom. So, as I said, when the marquis had knighted him, he fixed his affections on my lady Beatrice, who was also the sister of ray lady Adelaide de Salutz. He loved and desired her greatly, taking care that no one should suspect it, and he enhanced her reputation very much, and gained for her many friends, both men and women. And she received him flatteringly, but he was dying of apprehension because he dared not openly ask her love nor confess that he had set his heart upon her. But as a man distraught, he told her that he loved a very distinguished lady, and knew her very intimately, but dared not speak, nor betray his feeling, nor ask her for her love, because of her high consideration. And he prayed her in God’s name to advise him whether he should speak out the wish of his heart, or perish in silent devotion. That gentle lady, my lady Beatrice, when she heard this, and knew the admiration of Raimbaut, having plainly perceived before that he was dying of love for her, was touched by his passion and his piety. And she said, ‘ Raimbaut, it is well known that every faithful friend loves a gentle lady in such wise that he fears to betray his love. But sooner than die I would counsel him to speak and pray her to take him for a servitor and friend. For if she is wise and courteous she will not despise him. So this is the advice which I give you. Ask her to receive you for her cavalier. For you are such an one that any lady in the universe might so take you, as Adelaide, the Countess of Salutz holds Peire Vidal; and the Countess of Burins, Arnaut de Maroill; and my lady Mary, Gaucelm Faidit; and the Lady of Marseilles, Folquet.’ . . . When Lord Raimbaut heard the comfortable advice which she gave, ... he told her that she was herself the lady whom he loved, and concerning whom he had asked advice. And my lady Beatrice told him that it was well done, . . . and that she would accept him for her cavalier. Lord Raimbaut did then exalt her fame to the utmost of his ability, and it was then he made the song which begins, —

“ Now it came to pass that the lady lay down and fell asleep beside him, and the marquis, her husband, who loved her well, found them so, and was wroth. But, like a wise man, he forbore to touch them, only he took his own mantle and covered them with it, and took that of Raimbaut and went his way. And when Raimbaut arose he knew well what had happened, and he took the mantle of the marquis and sought him straightway, and kneeled before him and prayed for mercy. And the marquis perceived that Raimbaut knew bow he had been discovered, and he recalled all the pleasure which Raimbaut had given him in divers places. And because Raimbaut had said softly, in order that he might not be understood to be bespeaking pardon, that he would forgive the marquis for putting on his robe, those who overheard thought that all this was because the marquis had taken Raimbaut’s mantle. And the marquis forgave him and made answer that he would wear his mantle no more. And only they two understood it. After that it came to pass that the marquis went with his forces into Roumania, and with great help from the church conquered the kingdom of Thessalonica. And there Lord Raimbaut distinguished himself by the feats which he performed, and there he was rewarded with great lands and revenues, and there he died. And concerning the deeds of his liege lord he made a song which has been transmitted by Peire Vidal, which begins

It was in 1204 that Raimbaut embarked from Venice for the East, his master, Montferrat, having been chosen leader of the expedition of that year in place of Thibaut of Champagne, who had died just as all things were made ready for departure two years before. This was the famous expedition which digressed to Constantinople, and expended its consecrated energies in the capture of that city and the subjugation of the Greek empire. The Marquis of Montferrat received the kingdom of Thessalonica as his share in the spoils of this victory, and thence he overran nearly the whole of Greece. Raimbaut was constantly with him and won abundant laurels, but underneath all the excitement and splendor of this adventurous life he seems to have carried a heart haunted by homesick longings and melancholy presentiments, which were soon to be justified. He fell in battle in the same year with his master, 1207, possibly upon the same field. The song in which he is said to have celebrated the fame of Montferrat is invariably ascribed in the collections to Peire Vidal. There is also an extremely interesting piece, transcribed at length by Fauriel, a sort of impetuous declaration of independence of the tyranny of love, the text of which is not in Raynouard’s collection, nor in any other accessible to ourselves. We give a few verses out of the song first cited in the Life just quoted, and the whole of one of Raimbaut’s latest pieces, a really noble and affecting lament composed in Roumania: —

Of the lay which follows, it may be remembered that Mistral quotes the first verse to illustrate the tender sorrows of

his friend Aubanel. Owing to the length of the piece, and the difficulty of dividing it, I have for once abandoned the attempt to keep the same rhyme in the corresponding lines of each stanza, but otherwise the form of the original is preserved. I have not been able to establish the identity of the “ English lord ” — evidently a man of note, though not the king —to whom the poem seems to have been addressed, in reply, perhaps, to some friendly challenge.

In this lament of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras we seem to hear the trumpet contending with the lute, and in the clang of its abrupt close the harsher strain prevails. It was ominous of the change which was immediately to pass upon Provencal song, the rapid but not inglorious decline of which was already decreed. The domestic crusade of the Roman church against the heretics of Albigeois was formally inaugurated in 1208, one year after the death, in the Orient, of Raimbaut and his master, Boniface of Montferrat. We are rather used to regard that infamous war — the strange horrors by which it was attended, and the appalling desolation of some of earth’s most delightful regions which it entailed — from a merely theological point of view. In reality it was a conflict involving a great variety of social and political interests, and in its lingering catastrophe many hopes perished which were wholly of this world. It was, in fact, or it became, a match between the great feudal nobles and the clergy, between the princes of the province and the fast growing central power of France, always highly orthodox and in strict alliance with the court of Rome. It was hardly more than incidentally and symbolically the resistance of darkness to light, priestly tyranny to the progress of free thought, regnant superstition to simple faith. The struggle lasted for about a generation, and our indignant sympathies are with the conquered side; less, however, because that side had a monopoly of piety, than because it was, broadly speaking, the side of chivalry, Culture, and common sense. We are glad to find that our troubadours, almost to a man, espoused the nobler and worse-fated cause, but we can see that, from the nature of their avocations and their personal relations with the great Provencal nobles, it could hardly have been otherwise.

One of them, indeed, Folquet of Marseilles, whom the chagrin of disappointed love had early driven into the cloister, and who had been made Bishop of Toulouse while yet a comparatively young man, won an immortality of dishonor by the ingenious atrocity with which he persecuted the heretics and their defenders; and one other, Perdigon, a man of considerable gifts but of the basest origin, turned traitor to his seignior and his first patron, Raymond of Toulouse, and accompanied the embassy which went to Rome under the leadership of William of Baux to demand the intervention of the Pope on behalf of sound, old-fashioned doctrine. In his own person Perdigon was sufficiently punished. His new mas ter tired of him, his apostasy to the cause of the south made him execrated among his countrymen, he fell into abject poverty, and with difficulty found even a monastery to afford him an asylum in his last days. With these exceptions the poets of Occitania were true to the cause of their country’s independence, both spiritual and political, and lifted up impassioned appeals against her subjugation.

Some of their greatest names are most associated with this unquiet latter time. This is true of him whom the ancient authorities generally agree in pronouncing the first of Provencal poets, Guiraut de Bornelh, or Borneil.⁹ “There was never a better troubadour,” are the words of his biographer, “either among those who went before or those who came after him, and the manner of his life was on this wise: all winter he studied in the school,¹⁰ and all summer he journeyed from court to court, accompanied by two jongleurs who performed his songs. He no longer desired to marry, but whatever he gained he gave to his poor relatives, or to the church of the town where he was born.” There is something tantalizing in the brevity of this notice, more particularly because it conveys the idea of an unwonted seriousness and nobility in the poet’s character. And it is certain that Guiraut de Bornelh was the true maker and master of the chanson, and that his lovepoems, though occasionally obscure, have an emotional depth and an equality of power surpassing those even of Bernard of Ventadour. When, in his later years, he swept the lyre with a sterner hand, and bewailed his country’s misfortunes and the decadence of her ehivalric glories, there was dignity in his grief, and even grandeur. The date of his death is disputed, but it could not well have occurred later than 1230, and even then he must have been very old.

The first half of the thirteenth century is also the epoch of Peire Cardenal. If Bernard of Ventadour was the sweetest minstrel among the troubadours, and Guiraut de Bornelh their loftiest poet, Peire Cardenal was indisputably the subtlest and most intellectual spirit among them all; his day was not an auspicious one for the conceits and amenities of love, but his moral appeals and laments are full of wrathful eloquence, and he searches the dark places of human destiny, the origin of evil, the mystery of free will, with a desperate intrepidity almost equal to that of Omar Kliayam. “ Who,” he cries, in the beginning of one of his pieces, “ desires to hear a sirvente woven of grief, embroidered with anger? I have spun it already, and I can make its warp and woof.” ¹¹ And there is another in which he rehearses the bold defense which he will make when he finds himself arraigned before the judgment - bar of God. This does not come properly within our scope, and we shall therefore return to our first theme, and close these fragmentary and, as many may well think, arbitrary illustrations with three specimens of a peculiar order of love song, the aubado, or morning counterpart of the serenade. Despite the superficial and apparently regular resemblance of sentiment and circumstance between the three, they are as wide apart in time as possible, and their dates embrace nearly the whole illustrious period of Occitanian song. That of the first cannot be precisely fixed, but it is apparently very early, and the nameless author was undoubtedly a woman. The second, which we incline to regard as the most perfect flower of Provencal poesy, was written by Guiraut de Bornelh in his prime. The third is by the last of the noteworthy troubadours, Bertrand of Alamanon. The fanciful song of Magali, in Mirèio, is also an aubado, thoroughly modern and highly artificial. If the reader will take the trouble to compare it with the “simple and sensuous” lay which follows, he will fully realize all the likeness and the unlikeness existing between the reproduction and the reality.

Here, at least, there is absolute artlessness, a kind of divine abandonment. The next is a world away from this, in its conscious and restrained fervor; separated from it as from a childish Eden, by the flaming sword of perfectly equipped chivalry.

And this is the last: —

In point of feeling these lines are not to be compared with the others. In their sweet but lagging rhythm there is a strange mingling of languor and levitv. They are, in fact, already a reminiscence, the tenuous echo of a music passed by.

Harriet W. Preston.