THE TROUBADOURS.*

THERE is a vast amount of careful and patient research displayed in this very interesting book ; it is popularly written, and will be welcomed by all who wish to understand something of the life of men living in long past and almost forgotten days, yet are unable themselves to follow in Mr. Rutherford's steps and examine original MSS.

Between the Po and the Ebro, the Mediterranean and the Loire and higher Rhone, lies a breadth of territory, the language of which, in the twelfth century, was the Langue d'Oc ; this dis- trict was the cradle and home of the Troubadours, and their songs were written in one or more of the dialects of the Langue d'Oc. The greater part of the land of the Troubadours now belongs to France ; in the olden time the French provinces of the Langue d'Oc owed fealty to the Kings who ruled in Paris, but through the twelfth century this fealty was but nominal ; the Provencals maintained a position of great independence, and regarded France with little favour. Circumstances combined to render this territory exceptionally prosperous, and to exempt it from the terrible devastations which ever followed medimval wars of invasion ; the attention of Germany was directed towards Italy, Normandy gave sufficient occupation to the Kings in Paris, and the Moors harassed Spain. With none to invade them, the cities of the Langue d'Oc grew rich, and its nobles and citizens powerful, thus they had leisure and oppor-

* The Troubadours By John Rutherford. London : Smith, Elder, and Co.

tunity for cultivating and encouraging something of art and literature. But this prosperity was not lasting. Brilliant, highly gifted, polished, and brave, the Provencals yet unhappily possessed qualities which fostered the germs of decay ; they were disturbed by domestic quarrels, by petty rivalries ; they had no spirit of combination ; they were frivolous, and possessed of a love of novelty, which led them to " court an alliance with foreigners ;" and they lacked political prudence. The penalty was severe ; they lost independence, position, wealth, even their language, which we are told was nearly as polished as Latin—their language, in which the Troubadours sang, in which their brilliant deeds were chronicled—sank into a patois, and is now only spoken by " day-labourers and maid-servants." The Troubadours, then, flourished in the twelfth century ; after that time their decay was. rapid ; before that time their history, if they existed, is obscured by mists too dense to be penetrated.

The Troubadours, more especially those who attached themselves.

to great houses, were men of varied accomplishments ; they were- expected to fill the place of historian, poet-laureate, master of the ceremonies, tutor, stage-manager, and musician, besides assisting with their superior knowledge the chaplain, equerry., master-at- arms, and huntsman ; they were required also to be good-

tempered, able to take as well as to make a joke, in an age when practical-joking was a favourite pastime. They also repre- sented the press, the post-office, and literature in general. We- read :—" There was neither peace nor war, nor revolt under- negotiation, which was not announced and criticised in rhyme.

The Serventes of Bertrand von Born, the Dauphin of Auvergne, Savari de Mauleon, and other established poets, were so many leading articles, as eagerly looked for as, and even more intently studied than, are those of the Times. But the trou- badour was far more welcome than the postman. Within his single person he included the circulating library, the opera, &c., as well as the newspaper and letter-box." Such

being his position and accomplishments, the troubadour exer- cised an almost boundless influence, and Mr. Rutherford's opinion

is that, on the whole, that influence was for good. The age was licentious, its splendours were barbaric, and supposing those instructions to have been necessary which the troubadours offered' their contemporaries for their guidance in matters of dress and be- haviour, the manners must have been coarse. The barbarism of the savage nature lingers among a people long after they have made considerable progress in the arts which belong to civilisation ; thus after describing wonderful feasts, for which the viands were prepared over the flame of wax tapers, of land ploughed by white oxen and sowed with golden crowns, Mr. Rutherford tells us that one Raymond de Venous, to exceed his compeers in the magnifi- cence of his extravagance, caused thirty stakes to be planted in the centre of the tilting-ground ; to these stakes his servants. fastened thirty noble horses, each superbly caparisoned ; in the- midst of the circle were placed the armour, weapons, and other- equipments of thirty men-at-arms. Then the lord of Venous caused a great quantity of wood to be heaped over the armour- and round the horses, fired the pile, and destroyed the whole. We think the thirty men -at-arms might deem themselves. fortunate that they were not included in this holocaust, for-

that worthy personage the Lord of Venous would be equal to any barbaric cruelty, if it afforded an opportunity for the display of his lavish profusion. We cannot, however, judge the twelfth by the standard of the nineteenth century. The Trouba- dours refined the age, and they raised women in the social scale. Mr. Rutherford speaks thus :-

" It has been said that vice is never so dangerous as when it takes. the form of elegance, and a greater mistake could not be put into lan- guage. The progress of society is just this,—in its primitive state, as the writings of all travellers inform us, depravity is the rule,—depravity,. open, shameless, and brutal As refinement progresses, vice loses one by one its primitive characteristics. First it ceases to be brutal, then it parts with its shamelessness, and finally it shrinks from sight. In the last stage it ceases to be distinctive of the age. Thus, social elegance is invariably the precursor of social purity, and in this way Provence, with its refined forms of vice, prepared the way for the refinement without the vice."

We think Mr. Rutherford's theory is correct, though subsequent French history may seem to place theory and practice very fax- apart, and even to suggest that our Galliean neighbours have never advanced beyond the second stage of the progress.

In Mr. Rutherford's opinion, the knowledge possessed by the few at that period was greater and more accurate than modern savans are willing to allow, and he is probably right ; in the pre-

sent day, the diffusion of knowledge has, from various causes, become a principle ; in mediaaval times it was not eo ; to be reticent meant

to retain power which might some day be needed for governing the multitude, to display knowledge not unfrequently meant to die a cruel death as a wizard ; for these reasons, it is impossible to gauge the extent of knowledge attained in these remote periods.

The Troubadours occupied various positions in the social scale ; while some sprang from and consorted with the dregs of the peop'e, others were companions of princes, and themselves bore old and honourable names. The customary laws of inheritance occasioned numbers of the latter to swell the ranks of the Troubadours. A dying baron would divide his lands equally among his sons ; thus in a few generations a large landed estate would be frittered away, and would dwindle to a miserable inheritance. Raymond de Miravals was a member of the aristocracy, who became a Trouba- dour, though his necessities appear to have been occasioned by the reckless living of his ancestors, rather than by the subdivision of the paternal estates. There were, however, several distinctions other than that of birth. There were theWanderiug Troubadours and the Cavalier Servente ; the latter attached himself to some lady ; and of these Cavaliers there were two classes ; in the one, they were the equal of the lady in social position, in the other they belonged to an inferior rank. The duties of a Cavalier Servente were to sing his mistress's perfections, to attend her on all occasions, to see that the right place, in accordance with her rank, was allotted her at festivities, to supply her daily with fresh flowers, to fight for her if requisite, and to undertake any hare-brained adventures which she might desire. A code and tribunal of love, the rules of which were rigid, were supposed to regulate the con- duct both of cavalier and mistress; the ladies, we are told, often preferred to choose a cavalier from an inferior grade ; he was more their humble servant, more useful, and if they wished to get rid of him, they could do so without incurring the obloquy which would have been theirs had they infringed the rules of the " Code of Love," the cavalier being an equal. The Cavalier sang his mis- tress's praises under a fictitious name, "Rambaud of Vaquieras styles Beatrice of Montferral 'My charming Cavalier,' Richard of Barbesieux sang his mistress under the name of My soul and my body,' and Arnaud Daniel Verhymed, Madame de Boville as 4 Cibernia.'" The Troubadours do not, however, stand alone in this ; our own poets of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth cen- turies have employed similar conceits. The Wandering Troubadours formed, we are told, two widely different classes, the professional and the amateur ; among the latter were great princes like Cceur de Lion and Alfonso el Sabio, great barons like the Counts of Poitou, Provence, and Toulouse, and many smaller ones ; the pro- fessional Troubadours were of various orders, noble, plebeian, wandering, stationary, the latter being chiefly such as were tired of wandering, and had taken service with some wealthy baron.

Mr. Rutherford gives us much information as to the forms of song used by the Troubadours. The Canson, he tells us, was a name given to poetry of most opposite kinds, the moral as well as the amorous ; the rhymes and pauses occurring in the first stanza had to be maintained to the end through six, twelve, or eighteen stanzas ; it closed with a few lines called a " Commiato," in which the poet apostrophises his composition, and bids it explain his smtiments to his mistress, his friends, or the world at large. In the Servente, which included the satirical eff usions of the period, more freedom was permitted, but the poet frequently elected to hamper himself as in the Canson. The Provencals originated the Sonnet, which derived its name from being sung to the sound of some instru- ment, and in its earliest form was a short poem of uncertain length. The Ballad also was of Provencal origin, so called because it was sung during the dance. The Frottola was a curious composition, in which proverbs and familiar sayings were strung together with- out any connection save that formed by rhyme and metre. There was also the Cobbole, a general title applied to a variety of songs, some of which were of the class termed by the Italians Madrigals ; -others were epigrammatic ; any poem which was short and irregu- lar came under this designation. Acrostics were not unknown to the Provencal poets ; they were also probably the originators of the verses known as Macaronic, since we learn that Rambaud of Vaquieras composed a Canson, using the Provencal dialect in the first stanza, the Tuscan in the second, French in the third, Gascon in the fourth, Catalan in the fifth, and all five in the sixth, wherein be gave a line to each. We are told also that there is scarcely one of the shorter kinds of poetry, for which we have names, that was not practised among the Provencals. We hear of a curious performance called a Tenzon ; this was a dispute in which one or more poets took part. It was in all probability originally extemporary : a subject was given, the disputants were required to concentrate their replies in a single stanza, and when all had taken part the president gave the decision. In later times the Tenzon became more elaborate ; several Troubadours would choose

subject and metre, the one who was to open the eubject would compose his stanza and transmit it to the next, it would be some weeks circulating, and when all the disputants had taken part, would be submitted to competent judges, or to one of the "Courts of Love." Some of the subjects chosen for the Tenzons were as curious as they were unedifying. If we may judge from the translations Mr. Rutherford has given us, the sonnets composed by the Cavaliers Serventes bore a strong resemblance to many such penned by our sixteenth and seventeenth-century writers ; when the lady smiled it was summer, and the cavalier basked in sun- shine, if she frowned, the poor singer described himself as exiled amid the frosts and snows of perpetual winter. Mr. Rutherford gives us numerous specimens of Provencal poetry translated into English ; he also devotes a chapter to those quaintly curious institutions, the " Courts of Love," and he has placed before us biographical sketches, at some length, of Rambaud of Vaquieras, of Peter Vidal, and of Raymond of Miraval.

The songs of the Troubadours are invaluable to the historian and antiquary, as presenting a picture of the age in which they

lived.. Though many of them took service with princes and barons, they may be regarded as siding with the people ; in their satire, however, they spared none, but struck at " all conditions of men," as an example of which the reader is referred to a Servente by Folquet de Lunel, and to another by the Monk of Montaudun, which he will find in pages 52 and 54, but which are too long for insertion. To hard-pressed combatants in the battle of life, the days of the Troubadours may seem like the "good old times" so often quoted ; but when these same "old times" are reproduced for our near inspection, as they are in the works of their own song-writers, the goodness becomes mythical, and we

are inclined to believe that " the good old times" are altogether apocryphal, unless we look for them before the day when Mother Eve ate the apple.

We most heartily recommend Mr. Rutherford's book to all those who feel an interest in a people long passed away, and we hope whoever takes it up may receive as much pleasure in perusing it as we have done. In conclusion, we will give one specimen of Provencal poetry ; it is a humorous description of a tournament by Rambaud of Vaquieras. Mr. Rutherford suggests that a tournament among the Provencals was rather a resemblance to the javelin play of the Moors, than the stern presentiment of battle that showed itself further northward :— " I'll tell you of our tournament, without circumlocution, What warriors bravest shone therein, and did most execution, Of who stood up, and who fell down, I'll say the simple truth; To magnify in love or war, trust me, I'm not the youth.

"The Lord of Baux began the fray—I err, it was his horse— A giant beast that overthrew whatever crossed his course : He backed against a noble count, and hurled him to the ground, And then, disabled with his kicks, fell twenty horses round!

" Among the crowd your Dragonel conspicuous appeared, _ As under him his fiery barb most furious plunged and reared, 'Twixt steed and rider to the last uncertain was the fray, For while the rider bit the dust, the former ran away.

" Count Beansire was released the next from his unruly steed, And thus enabled one to mount more most for martial deed. Then Barrel of Marseilles, good knight, a fine career did make, Till, by a knight still bettor, ho was flung into a brake.

"Across the lists Mondragon's lord I saw most boldly prance, And overthrow a knight, himself, without breaking his lance ; A squire, whose steed was skin and bone, it was that dealt the blow ; Mondragon calmly raised himself, and sought a safer foe.

" Mevallion's lord dashed bravely on, completely clad in mail ; The barb that bore him was a trifle larger than a quail ; His spear struck Nicholas on the helm; good Nicholas laughed amain ; To him the shock was such as might have dealt a drop of rain.

"The Prince of Orange boldly charged three warriors in a row, Because his horse would plunge that way, whether he would or no ; They fled, but if from man or horse to him it mattered nought, Since, chasing like a victor, he himself a victor thought."