Barons! your castles in safety place, Your cities and villages too, Before ye haste to the battle scene, And, Papiol! quickly go, And tell the lord of “Oc and No,” That peace already too long hath been. The Trouvères, were, as before intimated, the poet-musicians of North France. They wrote in a much more matter-of-fact manner than the troubadours, and wrote in the _Langue d’öil_, while the latter wrote in the _Langue d’oc_; two tongues as dissimilar as French and Italian, or English and Dutch. There existed lady troubadours and trouvères; the works of some of them are extant, and do not in any way compare unfavorably with those of the other sex. Of course there are several solitary cases where the Norman poet would write a love song, and the Provencal a fable, but the general tendency was as above indicated. Contemporary with the troubadours and trouvères, there arose in Germany, a similar order of singers, whose productions have been preserved, even more copiously than those of the southrons. The minne-singers began their career in Germany, under the glorious reign of Barbarossa, (Frederic I.) in the last half of the twelfth century. The first name which we meet with is Henry of Veldig, yet it is a singular fact that he, the first of a new order of singers, begins by complaining of the decadence of the true minne-lied (love-song.) The word minne-singer means simply love-singer, i. e.—singer of love-songs. We give here, a verse of this early love-song, and have endeavored to give a translation, preserving the original metre (as nearly literal as possible) below it. “Do man der rehten minne pflag Da pflag man ouch der ehren; Nu mag man naht und tag Die bösen sitte leren: Swer dis nu siht, und jens do sach, O we! was der nu clagen mag Tugende wend sich nu verkehren.” “When true love had its proper sway, Then honour too, was nourished But now by night and day All evil ways are cherished, Who knows the past and present way, Oh Woe! how well complain he may Since every virtue now has perished.” Almost all the lays of the minne-singers were written in the Swabian dialect which was then the court language of Germany. As a rule, their grace and elegance of diction was superior to that of the troubadours. They did not, like the latter, hire accompanists, or jongleurs, but played their own accompaniments on a viol. As in the South, emperors, princes, and knights, were proud to be known as minne-singers. There exists a little epigram (ascribed to Frederic II.,) which we are tempted to reproduce, as it gives an insight to the qualities which were esteemed at that time.