Part 3

the first line of the third distich repeating the second line of the first (and in the same way the first line of the fifth the second line of the third), in _leixa-pren_ (_laisser prendre_) corresponding evidently to the movements of the dance.[42] The love-lorn maidens danced together, the men forming a circle to look on. St. Augustine considered the dance to be a circle of which the Devil was the centre; in real life the Devil was often replaced by a tree (or by a _mayo_). The refrain was a notable feature of the _cossante_ in all its phases as it went, a _bailada_ (dance-song) from the _terreiro_, to become a _serranilha_ on the hills, or at pilgrimage shrines a _cantiga de romaria_,[43] or a _barcarola_ (boat-song) or _alvorada_ (dawn-song). A marked and thoroughly popular characteristic of the _cossante_ is its wistful sadness,[44] the _soidade_ which is already mentioned more than once in the _Cancioneiros_,[45] and, born in Galicia, continued in Portugal, combined with a more garish tone under the hotter sun of the South. Thus we have the melancholy Celtic temperament, absorbed in Nature, acting on the forms suggested by an alien religion till they become vague cries to the sea, to the deer of the hills, the flower of the pine. The themes are as simple and monotonous--the monotony of snowdrops or daffodils--as the form in which they are sung. A girl in the gloom of the pine-trees mourning for her lover, the birds in the cool of the morning singing of love, the deer troubling the water of a mountain-stream, the boats at anchor, or bearing away _meus amores_, or gliding up the river _a sabor_. The _amiga_ lingers at the fountain, she goes to wash clothes or to bathe her hair in the stream, she meets her lover and dances at the pilgrim shrine, she waits for him under the hazel-trees, she implores the waves for news of him, she watches for the boats _pelo mar viir_. The language is native to the soil, far more so, at least, than in the _cantigas de amor_ and _cantigas de amigo_ written under foreign influence. Their French or Provençal words and learned forms[46] are replaced in the _cossante_ by forms Galician or Spanish. Despite its striking appearance to us now among _sirventes senes sal_ in the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_, it must be confessed that the early _cossante_ of King Sancho has a somewhat meagre, vinegar aspect, and the _genre_ could hardly have developed so successfully in the next half-century had it not been fixed in the country-side, ever ready to the hand of the poet in search of fresh inspiration. It is possible to exaggerate the effect of war on the life of the peasant. Portugal in the twelfth century was only gradually and by constant conflict winning its territory and independence. It had no fixed capital and Court at which the Provençal poets might gather. But while king and nobles and the members of the religious and military orders were engaged with the Moors to the exclusion of the Muses, so that they had no opportunity to introduce the new measures, the peasants in Galicia and Minho no doubt went on tilling the soil and singing their primitive songs. In the thirteenth century Provençal poetry flourished in Portugal, but so monotonously that it failed to kill the older lyrics, and they reacted on the imported poetry. In the trite conventions with which the latter became clothed the _cossante_ had a new opportunity of life. _Trobadores_ wearied by their own monotony, _jograes_ wishing to please a patron with a _novidade_, had recourse to the _cossante_. The _jogral_ wandering from house to house and town to town necessarily came into close touch with the peasants. Talented men among them, prompted by patrons of good taste, no doubt exercised the third requisite of a good _jogral_ (_doair’ e uoz e aprenderdes ben_, C. C. B. 388)--a good memory--not only in learning his patron’s verses to recite at other houses but in remembering the songs that he caught in passing from the lips of the peasants, songs of village mirth and dance, of workers in the fields and shepherds on the hills. These, developed and adorned according to his talent, he would introduce to the Court among his _motz recreamens e prazers_. When Joan de Guilhade in the middle of the thirteenth century complained that _os trobadores ja van para mal_ (C. V. 370), he might almost be referring to the fact that the stereotyped poems of the Portuguese _trobadores_ could no longer compete with the fresh charm of the _cossante_. Alfonso X reproached Pero da Ponte for not singing like a Provençal but, rather, like Bernaldo de Bonaval (first half 13th c.). King Dinis in the second half of the century viewed the _cossante_ with such favour that he wrote or collected some of the most curious and delightful that we possess. But although King Dinis set his name to a handful of the finest _cossantes_, most of the _cossante_-writers belonged to an earlier period and were men of humble birth. Of NUNO FERNANDEZ TORNEOL[47] (first half 13th c.), poet and soldier, besides conventional _cantigas de amor_ we have eight simple _cossantes_ of which the _alvorada_ (C. V. 242), the _barcarola_ (C. V. 246), and C. V. 245 with its dance rhythm are especially beautiful. PEDR’ ANEZ SOLAZ[48] (early 13th c.) wrote a _cossante_ (C. V. 415) celebrated for its refrain, _lelia doura, leli leli par deus leli_, in which some have seen a vestige of Basque (_il_ = dead). Of MEENDINHO (first half 13th c.) we have only one poem, a _cantiga de romaria_ (C. V. 438), but its beauty has brought him fame;[49] and another _jogral_, FERNAND’ ESGUIO[50] (second half 13th c.), is remembered in the same way chiefly for C. V. 902: _Vayamos, irmana_. Bernaldo de Bonaval, one of the earliest Galician poets, and the _jograes_ Pero de Veer, Joan Servando, Airas Carpancho,[51] Martin de Ginzo,[52] Lopo and Lourenço, composed some charming pilgrimage songs in the second third of the thirteenth century. This was a popular theme, but the two poets who seem to have felt most keenly the attraction of the popular poetry and to have cultivated it most successfully are JOAN ZORRO (fl. 1250) and PERO MEOGO (fl. 1250). The _cossantes_ of Zorro, one of the most talented of all these singers, tell of Lisbon and the king’s ships and the sea. In this series of _barcarolas_ (C. V. 751-60) and in his delightful _bailada_ (C. V. 761)[53] he evidently sought his inspiration in popular sources, as with equal felicity a little later did Pero Meogo,[54] whose _cossantes_ (C. V. 789-97), each with its biblical reference to the deer of the hills (_cervos do monte_), are as singular as they are beautiful. MARTIN CODAX at about the same time was singing graceful songs of the _ondas do mar_ of Vigo (C. V. 884-90). But the real poet of the sea was the Admiral of Castille, PAY GOMEZ CHARIÑO[55] (†1295). He belonged to an ancient family of Galicia, was prominent at the Courts of Alfonso X (between whose character and the sea he draws an elaborate parallel in C. A. 256) and of his son Sancho IV, played an important part in the troubled history of the time, and fought by land and sea in Andalucía, at Jaen in 1246 and Seville in 1247. On the lips of his _amiga_ he places a touching _cantiga de amigo_ (C. V. 424: she expresses her relief that her _amigo_ has ceased to be _almirante do mar_; no longer will she listen in sadness to the wind, now her heart may sleep and not tremble at the coming of a messenger) and the two sea _cossantes_ C. V. 401, with its plaining refrain:

E van-se as frores d’aqui ben con meus amores, idas son as frores d’aqui ben con meus amores,

--one can imagine it sung as a chanty[56]--and C. V. 429, in which she prays Santiago to bring him safely home: ‘Now in this hour Over the sea He is coming to me, Love is in flower.’ Beauty of expression and a loyal sincerity are conspicuous in his poems, as well as a certain individuality and vigour. He escaped the perils of the sea, the _mui gran coita do mar_ (C. A. 251), but to fall by the hand of an assassin on shore. His sea lyrics are only excelled by the enchanting melody of the poem (C. V. 488) of his contemporary and fellow-countryman ROY FERNANDEZ (second half 13th c.), who was apparently a professor at Salamanca University, Canon of Santiago, and Chaplain to Alfonso the Learned. Of the later poets ESTEVAM COELHO, perhaps father of one of the assassins of Inés (†1355), wrote a _cossante_ of haunting beauty (C. V. 321):

Sedia la fremosa, seu sirgo torcendo, Sa voz manselinha fremoso dizendo Cantigas d’amigo,

and D. AFONSO SANCHEZ (_c._ 1285-1329) in C. V. 368 (_Dizia la fremosinha--Ay Deus val_) proved that he had inherited part of his father King Dinis’ genius and instinct for popular poetry. King Dinis, having thrown wide his palace doors to these thyme-scented lyrics, would turn again to the now musty chamber of Provençal song (C. V. 123):

Quer’eu en maneira de provençal Fazer agora un cantar d’amor.

The _cossantes_ had become so familiar that Airas Nunez, of Santiago, could string them together, as it were, by the head, without troubling himself to give more than the first lines, precisely as Gil Vicente treated _romances_ three centuries later. The reader or listener would easily complete them. His _pastorela_ (C. V. 454) would be an ordinary imitation of a _pastourelle_ of the _trouvères_[57] were it not for the five _cossante_ fragments inserted. Riding along a stream he hears a solitary shepherdess singing and stays to listen. First she sang _Solo ramo verde frolido_,[58] then--as if to prove that she is a shepherdess of Arcady, not of real life--

Ay, estorniño do avelanedo, Cantades vos e moir’eu e peno, D’amores ei mal,

an impassioned cry of the heart only comparable with

Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth: Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth;

or that wonderful line of a wonderful poem:

Illa cantat, nos tacemus: quando ver venit meum?[59]

Next she sang the first lines of a _cossante_ by Nuno Fernandez Torneol (C. V. 245) with its dance refrain _E pousarei solo avelanal_. The refrain is identical in C. V. 245 and C. V. 454, but the distich has variations which seem to imply that Airas Nunez was not quoting Fernandez, rather that both drew from a popular source. The fourth _cossante_ we also have complete, a lovely _barcarola_ by Joan Zorro (C. V. 757):

Pela ribeira do rio (alto) Cantando ia la dona virgo (d’algo) D’amor: Venhan as barcas pelo rio A sabor.[60]

Lastly she (or he), as he rides on his way, sings:

Quen amores ha Como dormira, Ai bela fror!

i.e. _este cantar_ which is familiar in the _villancico_ (_Por una gentil floresta_) by the Marqués de Santillana (1398-1458):

La niña que amores ha ¿Sola cómo dormirá?

Very few, if any, of the _cossantes_ were anonymous, which only means that modern folk-lore was unknown; it was not the fashion to collect songs from the lips of the people without ulterior purpose. A variety known as _cantiga de vilãos_ existed, but it was deliberately composed by the _trobadores_ and _jograes_.[61] A specimen is given in C. V. 1043:

Ó pee d’hũa torre Baila corpo piolo,[62] Vedes o cós, ay cavaleiro.

No drawing-room lyric, evidently: more likely to be sung in taverns; composed perhaps by a knight like him of C. V. 965, whose songs were not _fremosos e rimados_. Like the Provençal poet Guilherme Figueira who _mout se fetz grazir ... als ostes et als taverniers_, this knight’s songs pleased ‘tailors, furriers and millers’; they had not the good taste of the tailor’s wife in Gil Vicente who sings the beautiful _cantiga_

Donde vindes filha Branca e colorida?

The _cantiga de vilãos_ was no such simple popular lyric, but rather a drinkers’ song, picaresquely allusive, sung by a _jogral_ who _non fo hom que saubes caber entre ‘ls baros ni entre la bona gen_ but sang _vilmen et en gens bassas, entre gens bassas per pauc d’aver_ (Riquier), _cantares de que la gente baja e de servil condicion se alegra_ (Santillana). The _cossante_, on the contrary, came straight from field and hill into palace and song-book. Probably many of them were composed, as they were sung, and sung dancing, by the women. The women of Galicia have always been noted for their poetical and musical talent. We read of the _choreas psallentium mulierum_, like Miriam, the sister of Moses, at Santiago in 1116,[63] and there is a cloud of similar witnesses. But whether any of the _cossantes_ that we have in the _Cancioneiros_ is strictly of the people or not, their traditional indigenous character is no longer doubtful. It would surely be a most astounding fact had the Galician-Portuguese Court poets, who in their _cantigas de amor_ reduced Provençal poetry to a colourless insipidity, succeeded so much better with the _cossantes_ that, while the originals from which they copied have vanished, the imitations stand out in the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ like crimson poppies among corn. It is remarkable, too, that of the three kinds of poem in the old _Cancioneiros_, satire, love song, and _cossante_, the first two remain in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ (1516), but the third has totally disappeared. The explanation is that as Court and people drew apart and the literary influence of Castille grew, the poems based on songs of the people were no longer in favour. But they continued, like the Guadiana, underground, and D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos has traced their occasional reappearances in poets of popular leanings, like Gil Vicente and Cristobal de Castillejo, from the thirteenth century to the present day,[64] while Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos has discovered whole _cossantes_ sung by peasants at their work in the fields in the nineteenth century.[65] Dance or action always accompanies the _cossante_ as it does in the _danza prima_ of Asturias (to the words _Ay un galan d’esta villa, ay un galan d’esta casa_).[66] If it be objected that the songs printed by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos are rude specimens by the side of a poem like _Ay flores, ay flores do verde pinho_, it should be remembered that the _quadra_ (or perhaps one should say distich without refrain) has now replaced the _cossante_ on the lips of the people, and that among these quatrains something of the old _cossante’s_ charm and melancholy is still found. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos and others have remarked that these _quadras_ pass from mouth to mouth and are perfected in the process, smoothed and polished like a stone by the sea, and this may well have been true of the earlier _cossantes_.[67] The _jogral_ who hastened to his patron with a lovely new poem was but reaping the inspiration of a succession of anonymous singers, an inspiration quickened by competition in antiphonies of song at many a pilgrimage. One singer would give a distich of a _cossante_, as to-day a _quadra_, another would take it up and return it with variations. The _cossante_ did not always preserve its simple form, or, rather, the more complicated poems renewed themselves in its popularity. We find it as a _bailada_ (C. V. 761), _balleta_ (cf. C. A. 123: _Se vos eu amo mais que outra ren_), as _cantiga de amor_ (C. A. 360 or 361, C. V. 657-60), _cantiga de maldizer_ (C. V. 1026-7), or satirical _alba_ (C. V. 1049). But these hybrid forms are not the true _cossante_, which is always marked by dignity, restraint, simple grace, close communion with Nature, delicacy of thought, and a haunting felicity of expression. The _cossante_ written by King Sancho seems to indicate a natural development of the indigenous poetry. In its form it owed nothing to the poetry of Provence or North France, but its progress was perhaps quickened, and at least its perfection preserved, by the systematic cultivation of poetry introduced from abroad at a time when no middle class separated Court and peasant. The tantalizing fragments that survive in Gil Vicente’s plays show all too plainly what marvels of popular song might flower and die unknown. In spirit the original grave religious character of the _cossante_ may in some measure have affected the new poetry. To this in part may be ascribed the monotony, the absence of particular descriptions in the _cantigas de amor_. In religious hymns obviously reverence would not permit the Virgin to be described in greater detail than, for example, Gil Vicente’s vague _branca e colorada_, and the reverence might be transferred unconsciously to poems addressed to an earthly _dona_. (Only in the extravagant devotional mannerisms (_gongorismo ao divino_) of the seventeenth century could Soror Violante do Ceo describe Christ as a _galan de ojos verdes_.) _Dona genser qu’ieu no sai dir_ or _la genser que sia_ says Arnaut de Marueil at the end of the thirteenth century. The Portuguese poet would make an end there: his lady is fairest among women, fairer than he can say. He would never go on to describe her grey eyes and snowy brow: _huelhs vairs_ and _fron pus blanc que lis_. But introduced into alien and artificial forms, like mountain gentians in a garden, the monotony can no longer please. In the _cantigas de amor_ the iteration becomes a tedious sluggishness of thought, whereas in the _cossantes_ it is part of the music of the poem.

C. A. = Cancioneiro da Ajuda.

C. A. M. V. = Cancioneiro da Ajuda. Ed. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. 2 vols. Halle, 1904.

C. A. S.= Fragmentos de hum Cancioneiro Inedito que se acha na Livraria do Real Collegio dos Nobres de Lisboa. Impresso á custa de Carlos Stuart, Socio da Academia Real de Lisboa. Paris, 1823.

C. A. V. = Trovas e Cantares de um Codice do XIV Seculo. Ed. Francisco Adolpho de Varnhagen. Madrid, 1849.

C. V. = Cancioneiro da Vaticana.

C. V. M. = Il Canzoniere Portoghese della Biblioteca Vaticana. Ed. Ernesto Monaci. Halle, 1875.

C. V. B. = Cancioneiro Portuguez da Vaticana. Ed. Theophilo Braga. Lisboa, 1878.

C. T. A. = Cancioneirinho das Trovas Antigas colligidas de um grande Cancioneiro da Bibliotheca do Vaticano. Ed. F. A. de Varnhagen. Vienna (1870), 2nd ed. 1872.

C. A. P. = Cantichi Antichi Portoghesi tratti dal Codice Vaticano 4803 con traduzione e note, a cura di Ernesto Monaci. Imola, 1873.

C. L. = Cantos de Ledino tratti dal grande Canzoniere portoghese della Biblioteca Vaticana. Ed. E. Monaci. Halle, 1875.

C. D. M. = Cancioneiro d’ El Rei D. Diniz, pela primeira vez impresso sobre o manuscripto da Vaticana. Ed. Caetano Lopes de Moura. Paris, 1847.

C. D. L. = Das Liederbuch des Königs Denis von Portugal. Ed. Henry R. Lang. Halle, 1894.

C. C. B. = Il Canzoniere Portoghese Colocci-Brancuti. Ed. Enrico Molteni. Halle, 1880.

C. M. = Cantigas de Santa Maria de Don Alfonso el Sabio. 2 vols. Madrid, 1889.

C. G. C. = Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano. Ed. H. R. Lang. Vol. i. New York, London, 1902.

C. M. B. = Cancionero Musical de los Siglos XV y XVI. Transcrito y comentado por Francisco Asenjo Barbieri. Madrid (1890).

C. B. = Cancionero de Juan Alfonso de Baena. Madrid, 1851.

C. G. = Cancionero General (1511).

C. R. = Cancioneiro de Resende. Lisboa, 1516 (= Cancioneiro Geral).

FOOTNOTES:

[30] Kazwînî ap. Reinhart Dozy, _Spanish Islam_, trans. F. G. Stokes, London, 1913, p. 663.

[31] C. A. 38. It is a _cantiga de meestria_, of two verses, each of eight octosyllabic lines (_abbaccde bfbaccde_).

[32] Although neither English nor Portuguese, it is a name for these poems, of lines _pariter plangentes_, less clumsy than _parallelistic songs_ adopted by Professor Henry R. Lang (who also uses the words _serranas_--but see C. D. L., p. cxxxviii, note 2; Dr. Theophilo Braga had called them _serranilhas_--and _Verkettungslieder_), _Parallelstrophenlieder_ (D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos), _cantigas parallelisticas_ (D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos and Snr. J. J. Nunes), _chansons à répétitions_ (M. Alfred Jeanroy). _Cantos dualisticos_, _cantos de danza prima_, and _bailadas encadeadas_ have also been proposed.

[33] Perhaps = rhyme (_consoante_), but more probably it is derived from _cosso_, an enclosed place, which would be used for dancing: cf. Cristobal de Castillejo, _Madre, un caballero Que estaba en este cosso (bailia)_. In the _Relacion de los fechos del mui magnifico é mas virtuoso señor el señor Don Miguel Lucas_ [_de Iranzo_] _mui digno Condestable de Castilla_, p. 446 (A.D. 1470), occurs the following passage: _Y despues de danzar cantaron un gran rato de cosante_ (_Memorial Histórico Español_, tom. viii, Madrid, 1855). Rodrigo Cota, in the _Diálogo entre el Amor y un Viejo_, has _danças y corsantes_, and Antón de Montoro (el Ropero) asks _un portugues que vido vestido de muchos colores_ if he is a _cantador de corsante_ (v. l. _cosante_) (_Canc. General_, ed. Biblióf. Esp., ii. 270, no. 1018).

[34] In the _Grundriss_ (1894), _Randglossen_ (1896-1905), and especially vol. ii of the _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_ (1904).

[35] Or _Solo ramo verde granado_: the green branch in (red) flower.

[36] Translations of Chinese poems resembling the _cossantes_ are given by Dr. Theophilo Braga, C. V. B., _Introd._, p. ci, and Professor H. R. Lang, C. D. L., _Introd._, p. cxlii. A Provençal poem with resemblance to a _cossante_ is printed in Bartsch, p. 62: _Li tensz est bels, les vinnesz sont flories_.

[37] Any one who has heard peasants at a _Stabat_ singing the hymn

Stabat Mater dolorosa _Jussa crussa larimosa Du penebat_ Filius

realizes that the words for them have no meaning, but that they will long remember tune and rhythm. Compare, for the form, the Latin hymn to the Virgin by the Breton poet Adam de Saint Victor (†1177):

Salve Verbi sacra parens, Flos de spinis spinis carens, Flos spineti gloria.

[38] Cf. Luis José Velázquez, _Orígenes de la Poesía Castellana_ (Málaga, 1754) ap. C. M. (1889), i. 168: _las cantares y canciones devotas de los peregrinos que iban en romería a visitar la iglesia de Compostela mantuvieron en Galicia el gusto de la poesía en tiempos bárbaros_. A Latin hymn composed in the twelfth century by Aimeric Picaud is printed in _Recuerdos de un Viaje á Santiago de Galicia_ por el P. Fidel Fita y D. Aureliano Fernández-Guerra (Madrid, 1880), p. 45: _Jacobi Gallecia Opem rogat piam Glebe cujus gloria Dat insignem viam Ut precum frequentia Cantet melodiam. Herru Sanctiagu! Grot Sanctiagu! Eultreja esuseja! Deus, adjuva nos!_

[39] Cf. Simão de Vasconcellos, _Cronica da Companhia de Jesu do Estado do Brazil_ (1549-62), 2nd ed. (1865), Bk. I, § 22: _chegamos a huma praça_ [in Santiago de Compostela] _onde vimos hum ajuntamento de mulheres Gallegas com grande risada e galhofa; e querendo o irmão meu companheiro pedir-lhe esmola vio que estavão todas ouvindo a huma que feita pregadora arremedava, como por zombaria, o sermão que eu tinha pregado_.

[40] One has but to watch a Rogation procession passing through the fields in the Basque country (which until recently preserved customs of immemorial eld and still calls the Feast of Corpus Christi, introduced by Pope Urban IV in 1262, ‘the New Feast--_Festa Berria_’) to realize the singularly impressive effect of the singing, first the girls’ treble _Ave Ave Ave Maria, Ave Ave Ave Maria_, then the answering bass of the men far behind, _Ave Ave Ave Maria, Ave Ave Ave Maria_ (with the slow ringing of the church bell for a refrain like the _contemplando_ and _tan callando_ in the _Coplas de Manrique_).

[41] Cf. Gil Vicente, _Tambor em cada moinho_. It is a curious coincidence that the word _citola_ (the _jogral’s_ fiddle) = mill-clapper. Cf. also _moinante_ in Galicia = _pícaro_.