Os momos, os serões de Portugal Tam fallados no mundo, onde são idos, E as graças temperadas do seu sal? [265] This play is written in lines of 10, 11, or 12 syllables with a break of a line of 5 or 6 syllables after every four lines. Most of Gil Vicente’s plays are in octosyllabic _redondilhas_ with or without breaks of a line of four syllables, as in the poems of Duarte de Brito and others in the _Cancioneiro Geral_. Lightness, grace, and ease mark this metre in Vicente’s hands. [266] This splendour-loving king bears an unmistakable resemblance to King Manuel, before whom the play was acted, but in no other instance does Vicente allow his satire to touch the king or royal family: _cumpre attentar como poemos as mãos_ (_Cortes de Jupiter_). [267] 1598 ed. (colophon). The date of the first edition is 1512. [268] Montalvo’s _Amadis_ clearly. Vicente, who invariably suits his language to his subject, would have written in Portuguese had the text before him been Portuguese. If Montalvo’s _Amadis_ became fashionable in Portugal this was characteristic of the Portuguese, who would welcome foreign books while they despised and neglected their own. [269] When Flerida meets D. Duardos disguised as a gardener she supposes that his ordinary fare is garlic. [270] For the words _quanto en caso de amores_ the Censorship is evidently responsible. [271] Cf. Zurara, _Cronica de D. João I_, 1899 ed., i. 116: _Alli houve momos de tão desvairadas maneiras que a vista delles fazia mui grande prazer_. [272] _Cancioneiro Geral_, 1910 ed., i. 326. [273] The Portuguese in the East in the sixteenth century maintained these customs. We read of Christmas _autos_ in India and a _representaçam dos Reis_ in Ethiopia. Cf. the Good Friday _centurios_ in Barros, II. i. 5. [274] i. 103. The word was of course not new in the Peninsula. Cf. the thirteenth(?)-century _El Misterio de los Reyes Magos_. [275] _Breve Summario da Historia de Deos_ (i. 309). [276] In the _Pranto de Maria Parda_ ‘because she saw so few branches on the taverns in the streets of Lisbon and wine so dear and she could not live without it’. [277] _Do macho rruço de Luys Freyre estando pera morrer._ See also Dr. H. R. Lang, C. G. C., pp. 174-8, note on the will of the Archdeacon of Toro; and the extract from a manuscript _testamento burlesco_ in J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _De Campolide a Melrose_ (1915). [278] As neither of them is printed in his plays we cannot say whether they were two or one and the same, or whether the French of his song was more intelligible than the version preserved in Barbieri’s _Cancionero Musical_ (No. 429). [279] For instance, the following lines and phrases of the _Cancioneiro Geral_: _Hirmee a tierras estrañas_, _Oo morte porque tardais_, _Vos soes o mesmo paço_, _E outras cousas que calo_, _O eco pelos vales_. The Portuguese fifteenth-century poet by whom he was most influenced was probably Duarte de Brito.