University of Virginia Library

2. THE
ANCIENT LYRIC POETRY
OF THE
NORTH OF FRANCE.

THE TROUVÈRES.

The literature of France is peculiarly rich
in poetry of the olden time. We can trace
up the stream of song until it is lost in the
deepening shadows of the Middle Ages. Even
there it is not a shallow, tinkling rill; but
it comes like a mountain stream, rushing and
sounding onward through the enchanted regions
of romance, and mingles its voice with
the tramp of steeds and the brazen sound of
arms.

The glorious reign of Charlemagne [1] at the
close of the eighth and the commencement of
the ninth century, seems to have breathed a
spirit of literature as well as of chivalry
throughout all France. The monarch established
schools and academies in different parts
of his realm; and took delight in the society
and conversation of learned men. It is amusing
to see with what evident self-satisfaction
some of the magi, whom he gathered around

him, speak of their exertions in widening the
sphere of human knowledge, and pouring in
light upon the darkness of their age. “For
some,” says Alcuin, the director of the school
of St Martin de Tours, “I cause the honey of
the holy scriptures to flow; I intoxicate others
with the old wine of ancient history; these I
nourish with the fruits of grammar, gathered
by my own hands; and those I enlighten by
pointing out to them the stars, like lamps
attached by the vaulted ceiling of a great palace!”

Beside this classic erudition of the schools,
the age had also its popular literature. Those
who were untaught in scholastic wisdom, were
learned in traditionary lore; for they had their
ballads, in which were described the valor and
achievements of the early kings of the Franks.
These ballads, of which a collection was made
by order of Charlemagne, animated the rude
soldier as he rushed to battle, and were sung in
the midnight bivouacs of the camp. “Perhaps
it is not too much to say” observes the literary
historian Schlegel, “that we have still in our
possession, if not the original language and

form, at least the substance of many of those
ancient poems, which were collected by the
orders of that prince;—I refer to the Nibelungen
Lied, and the collection which goes by the
name of the Heldenbuch.”

When at length the old Tudesque language,
which was the court language of Charlemagne,
had given place to the Langue d'Oil, the
Northern dialect of the French romance, these
ancient ballads passed from the memories of
the descendants of the Franks, and were succeeded
by the romances of Charlemagne and his
Twelve Peers,—of Roland, and Oliver, and
the other Paladins, who died at Roncesvalles.
Robert Wace, a Norman Trouvère of
the twelfth century, says in one of his poems,
that a minstrel named Taillefer, mounted on a
swift horse, went in front of the Norman army
at the battle of Hastings, singing these ancient
poems.

These chansons de geste, or old historic
romances of France, are epic in their character,
though without doubt they were written to
be chaunted to the sound of an instrument.
To what period many of them belong in their

present form has never yet been fully determined;
and should it finally be proved by phylological
research, that they can claim no higher
antiquity than the twelfth or thirteenth
century, still there can be little doubt that in
their original form many of them reached far
back into the ninth or tenth. The long prevalent
theory, that the romances of the Twelve
Peers of France all originated in the fabulous
chronicle of Charlemagne and Roland, written
by the Archbishop Turpin in the twelfth
century, if not as yet generally exploded, is
nevertheless fast losing ground.

To the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, also,
belong most of the Fabliaux, or metrical tales
of the Trouvères. Many of these compositions
are remarkable for the inventive talent they
display; but as poems they have, generally
speaking, little merit, and at times exhibit
such a want of refinement, such open and
gross obscenity as to be highly offensive.

It is a remarkable circumstance in the literary
history of France, that whilst her anti-quarians
and scholars have devoted themselves
to collecting and illustrating the poetry of the

Troubadours, the early lyric poets of the
South, that of the Trouvères, or Troubadours
of the North, has been almost entirely neglected.
By a singular fatality, too, what little time and
attention have hitherto been bestowed upon the
fathers of French poetry, have been so directed
as to save from oblivion little of the most valuable
portions of their writings, whilst the more
tedious and worthless parts have been brought
forth to the public eye, as if to deaden curiosity
and put an end to farther research. The
ancient historic romances of the land have, for
the most part, been left to slumber on unnoticed;
whilst the obscene and tiresome Fabliaux
have been ushered in to the world as fair specimens
of the ancient poetry of France. This
has created unjust prejudices in the minds of
many against the literature of the olden time,
and has led them to regard it as nothing more
than a confused mass of coarse and vulgar fictions,
adapted to a rude and inelegant state of
society.

Of late, however, a more discerning judgment
has been brought to the difficult task of
ancient research; and in consequence of this

the long established prejudices against the
crumbling monuments of the national literature
of France during the Middle Ages is fast disappearing.
Several learned men are engaged
in rescuing from oblivion the ancient poetic
romances of Charlemagne and the Twelve
Peers of France, and their labors seem destined
to throw new light not only upon the
state of literature, but upon the state of society,
during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Among the voluminous remains of Troubadour
literature, little else has yet been discovered
save poems of a lyric character. The
lyre of the Troubodour seems to have responded
to the impulse of momentary feelings only,—to
the touch of local and transitory circumstances.
His song was a sudden burst of excited feeling:—it
ceased when the passion was subdued,
or rather when its first feverish excitement
passed away; and as the liveliest feelings are
the most transitory, the songs, which embodied
them are short, but full of spirit and energy.
On the other hand the great mass of the poetry
of the Trouvères is of a narrative or epic character.
The genius of the North seems always

to have delighted in romantic fiction; and whether
we attribute the origin of modern romance
to the Arabians or to the Scandanavians,—
this at least is certain, that there existed marvellous
tales in the nothern languages, and from
these, in part at least, the Trouvères imbibed
the spirit of narrative poetry. There are no
traces of lyric compositions among their writings,
till about the commencement of the thirteenth
century; and it seems probable that the
spirit of song-writing was imbibed from the
Troubadours of the South.

Unfortunately the neglect which has so
long attended the old historic and heroic romances
of the North of France has also befallen
in some degree its early lyric poetry. Little
has yet been done to discover and bring forth
its riches; and doubtless many a sweet little
ballad and melancholly complaint lies buried in
the dust of the thirteenth century. It is not
however my object, in this paper to give an
historical sketch of this ancient and almost forgotten
poetry, but simply to bring forward a
few specimens, which shall exhibit its most
striking and obvious characteristics.

In these examples it would be in vain to look
for high-wrought expression, suited to the prevailing
taste of the present day. Their most
striking peculiarity, and perhaps their greatest
merit, consists in the simple and direct expression
of feeling, which they contain. This feeling,
too, is one which breathes the langor of that
submissive homage, which was paid to beauty
in the days of chivalry; and I am aware that in
this age of masculine and matter-of-fact thinking,
the love-conceits of a more poetic state of
society are generally looked upon as extremely
trivial and puerile. Nevertheless I shall venture
to present one or two of these simple ballads,
which by recalling the distant age wherein
they were composed, may peradventure please
by the power of contrast.

I have just remarked, that one of the greatest
beauties of these ancient ditties is naïveté of
thought and simplicity of expression. These I
shall endeavor to preserve as far as possible in
the translation, though I am fully conscious
how much the sparkling beauty of an original
loses in being filtered through the idioms of a
foreign language.

The favorite theme of the ancient lyric poets
of the North of France is the wayward passion
of love. They all delight to sing les douces
dolors et li mal plaisant de fine amor.
With such feelings the beauties of the opening
Spring are naturally associated. Almost every
love ditty of the old poets commences with
some such exordium as this; “When the
snows of winter have passed away, when the
soft and gentle spring returns, and the flower
and leaf shoot in the groves, and the little
birds warble to their mates in their own sweet
language,—then will I sing my lady-love!

Another favourite introduction to these little
rhapsodies of romantic passion, is the approach
of morning and its sweet-voiced herald,
the lark. The minstrel's song to his lady-love
frequently commences with an allusion to
the hour,

The following is at once the simplest and
prettiest piece of this kind which I have met

with among the early lyric poets of the North
of France. It is taken from an anonymous
poem entitled “The Paradise of Love.” A
lover having passed the “live-long night in
tears, as he was wont,” goes forth to beguile
his sorrows with the fragrance and beauty of
morning. The carol of the vaulting sky-lark
salutes his ear, and to this merry musician he
makes his complaint.

Beside the “woful ballad made to his mistress'
eyebrow,” the early lyric poet frequently
indulges in more calmly analyzing the
philosophy of love, or in questioning the object
and destination of a sigh. Occasionally these
quaint conceits are prettily expressed, and the
little song flutters through the page like a butterfly.
The following is an example.

The ancient lyric poets of France are
generally spoken of as a class, and their beauties
and defects referred to them collectively
and not individually. In truth there are few
characteristic marks by which any individual
author can be singled out and ranked above the
rest. The lyric poets of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries stand upon nearly the same
level. But in the fifteenth century there were
two, who surpassed all their contemporaries
in the beauty and delicacy of their sentiments;
and in the sweetness of their diction, and the
structure of their verse, stand far in advance
of the age in which they lived. These are
Charles d'Orléans and Clotilde de Surville.

Charles, Duke of Orleans, the father of
Louis the Twelfth, and uncle of Francis the
First, was born in 1391. In the general tenor
of his life, the peculiar character of his mind,
and his talent for poetry, there is a striking
resemblance between this noble poet and James

the First of Scotland, his contemporary. Both
were remarkable for learning and refinement;
—both passed a great portion of their lives in
sorrow and imprisonment; and both cheered
the solitude of their prison walls with the
charms of poetry. Charles d' Orléans was
taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt in
1415, and carried into England, where he
remained twenty five years in captivity. It
was there, that he composed the greater part
of his poetry. In 1440 he returned to France,
where he died in 1467.

The poems of this writer exhibit a singular
delicacy of thought and sweetness of expression.
The following little Renouveaux, or
songs on the return of Spring, are full of delicacy
and beauty.

The second upon the same subject presents
a still more agreeable picture of the
departure of Winter and the sweet return of
Spring.

The only person of that age who can
dispute the laurel with Charles d' Orléans is
Clotilde de Surville. This sweet poetess was
born in the Bas-Vivarais in the year 1405.
Her style is singularly elegant and correct, and
the reader who will take the trouble to decipher
her rude provincial orthography, will find
her writings full of quiet beauty. The following
sweet lines, which breathe the very soul of
maternal tenderness, are part of a little poem
to her first born.

But upon this theme I have written
enough,—perhaps too much.

I have touched upon the subject before me
in a brief and desultory manner, and have purposely
left my remarks unincumbered by learned
reference and far-sought erudition; for these
are ornaments which would ill become so trivial
a pen as this wherewith I write, though
perchance the want of them will render my essay
unsatisfactory to the scholar and the critic.
But I am emboldened thus to skim with a light
wing over this poetic lore of the past, by the
reflection that the greater part of my readers
belong not to that grave and serious class, who
love the deep wisdom, which lies in quoting
from a quaint, forgotten tome, and are ready
on all occasions to say, “Commend me to the
owl.”