No subject, however, in connection with these _chansons de geste_ has occupied more attention than the precise mode of what has been called above their "authorship, publication, or performance." They are called _chansons_, and there is no doubt at all that in their inception, and during the earlier and better part of their history, they strictly deserved the name, having been written not to be read but to be sung or recited. To a certain extent, of course, this was the case with all the lighter literature of mediaeval times. Far later than our present period the English metrical romances almost invariably begin with the minstrel's invocation, "Listen, lordings," varied according to his taste, fancy, and metre; and what was then partly a tradition, was two or three hundred years earlier the simple record of a universal practice. Since the early days of the Romantic revival, even to the present time, the minutest details of this singing and recitation have been the subject of endless wrangling; and even the point whether it was "singing" or "recitation" has been argued. In a wider and calmer view these things become of very small interest. Singing and recitation--as the very word recitative should be enough to remind any one--pass into each other by degrees imperceptible to any but a technical ear; and the instruments, if any, which accompanied the performance of the _chansons_, the extent of that accompaniment, and the rest, concern, if they concern history at all, the history of music, not that of literature. [Sidenote: _Hearing, not reading, the object._] [Sidenote: _Effect on prosody._]