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_.