The "first warbler," Count William IX. of Poitiers, has already been mentioned, and his date fixed at exactly the first year of our period. His chief immediate successors or contemporaries were Cercamon ("Cherchemonde," _Cursor Mundi_); the above quoted Marcabrun, who is said to have accompanied Cercamon in his wanderings, and who has left much more work; and Bertrand de Ventadorn or Ventadour, perhaps the best of the group, a farmer's son of the place from which he takes his noble-sounding name, and a professional lover of the lady thereof. Of Jaufre (Geoffrey) Rudel of Blaye, whose love for the lady of Tripoli, never yet seen by him, and his death at first sight of her, supply, with the tragedy of Cabestanh and the cannibal banquet, the two most famous pieces of Troubadour anecdotic history, we have half-a-dozen pieces. In succession to these, Count Rambaut of Orange and Countess Beatrice of Die keep up the reputation of the _gai saber_ as an aristocratic employment, and the former's poem-- "Escoutatz mas no sai que s'es" (in six-lined stanzas, rhymed _ababab_, with prose "tags" to each, something in the manner of the modern comic song), is at least a curiosity. The primacy of the whole school in its most flourishing time, between 1150 and 1250, is disputed by Arnaut Daniel (a great master of form, and as such venerated by his greater Italian pupils) and Giraut de Bornelh, who is more fully represented in extant work than most of his fellows, as we have more than fourscore pieces of his. Peire or Peter Vidal, another typical troubadour, who was a crusader, an exceedingly ingenious verse-smith, a great lover, and a proficient in the fantastic pranks which rather brought the school into discredit, inasmuch as he is said to have run about on all fours in a wolfskin in honour of his mistress Loba (Lupa); Gaucelm Faidit and Arnaut de Maroilh, Folquet of Marseilles, and Rambaut of Vaqueras; the Monk of Montaudon and Bertrand de Born himself, who with Peire Cardinal is the chief satirist (though the satire of the two takes different forms); Guillem Figueira, the author of a long invective against Rome, and Sordello of mysterious and contingent fame,--are other chief members, and of some of them we have early, perhaps contemporary, _Lives_, or at least anecdotes. For instance, the Cabestanh or Cabestaing story comes from these. The last name of importance in our period, if not the last of the right troubadours, is usually taken to be that of Guiraut Riquier. [Sidenote: _Criticism of Provencal._]