A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the RenaissanceJusserand, J. J. (Jean Jules)
History
A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance
Jusserand, J. J. (Jean Jules)
English literature -- History and criticism
A young count falls in love with her, and is loved again. She sends him
to an old aunt of hers, who lives at Salerno, and will give him certain
potions to increase his strength. He does all she bids him. On the day
appointed, provided with a draught to swallow during the trial, he takes
the fair maiden in his arms. She had fasted for many days so as to weigh
less, and had put on an exceedingly light garment: "Except her shift, no
other stuff she wore";
N'ot drap vestu fors la chemise.
He climbs half-way, then begins to flag; but he wishes to owe everything
to his energy, and, without drinking, slowly continues to ascend. He
reaches the top and falls dead. The young girl flings away the now
useless flask, which breaks; and since then the mountain herbs moistened
by the potion have wonderful healing powers. She looks at her lover and
dies, like the Simonne of Boccaccio and of Musset. They were buried on
the mountain, where has since been built "the priory of the Two Lovers."
The rulers of England delight in still shorter poems, but again on the
same subject: love. Like the rest of the French, they have an innate
fondness for a kind of literature unknown to their new compatriots:
namely, _chansons_. They composed a great number of them, and listened
to many more of all sorts. The subjects of the kings of England became
familiar with every variety of the kind; for the Angevin princes now
possessed such wide domains that the sources of French poetry, poetry of
the North, poetry of the South, lyrical poetry of Poictou and of Maine,
gushed forth in the very heart of their empire.[197]
Their English subjects got acquainted with these poems in two ways:
firstly, because many of those songs were sung in the island; secondly,
because many Englishmen, soldiers, clerks, minstrels, messengers,
followed the king and stayed with him in the parts where the main wells
and fountains of the French _chanson_ happened to be.[198] They became
thus familiarised with the "reverdies," May songs, which celebrate
springtime, flowers, and free loves; "carols," or dancing songs;
"pastourelles," the wise or foolish heroines of which are shepherdesses;
"disputoisons" or debates, to which kind belongs the well-known song of
"transformations" introduced by Mistral in his "Mireio," and set to
music by Gounod; "aube" songs, telling the complaint of lovers, parted
by dawn, and in which, long before Shakespeare, the Juliets of the time
of Henry II. said to their Romeos:
It is not yet near day;
It was the nightingale and not the lark.
Il n'est mie jors, saverouze au cors gent,
Si m'ait amors, l'aloete nos ment.[199]
"It is not yet near day, my sweet one; love be my help, the lark lies."
In these songs, the women are slight and lithe; they are more gentle
than doves; their faces are all pink and white: "If the flowers of the
hawthorn were united to the rose, not more delicate would be their
colour than that on my lady's clear face."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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