provided an opportunity of displaying both poetical dexterity and also dialectical acumen. But rarely did either of the disputants declare himself convinced or vanquished by his opponents' arguments the question [33] was left undecided or was referred by agreement to an arbitrator. A poetical form which preserves some trace of its popular origin is the _pastorela_[15] or pastoral which takes its name from the fact that the heroine of the piece was always a shepherdess. The conventional opening is a description by a knight of his meeting with a shepherdess, "the other day" (_l'autrier_, the word with which the poem usually begins). A dialogue then follows between the knight and the shepherdess, in which the former sues for her favours successfully or otherwise. The irony or sarcasm which enables the shepherdess to hold her own in the encounter is far removed from the simplicity of popular poetry. The _Leys d'Amors_ mentions other forms of the same genre such as _vaqueira_ (cowherd), _auqueira_ (goose girl), of which a specimen of the first-named alone has survived. Of equal interest is the _alba_ or dawn-song, in which the word _alba_ reappeared as a refrain in each verse; the subject of the poem is the parting of the lovers at the dawn, the approach of which is announced by a watchman or by some faithful friend who has undertaken to guard their meeting-place throughout the night. The counterpart of this form, the _serena_, does not appear until late in the history of Provençal lyric poetry; in the _serena_ the lover longs for the [34] approach of evening, which is to unite him with his beloved. Other forms of minor importance were the _comjat_ in which a troubadour bids a lady a final farewell, and the _escondig_ or justification in which the lover attempts to excuse his behaviour to a lady whose anger he had aroused. The troubled state of his feelings might find expression in the _descort_ (discord), in which each stanza showed a change of metre and melody. The _descort_ of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras is written in five dialects, one for each stanza, and the last and sixth stanza of the poem gives two lines to each dialect, which Babel of strange sounds is intended, he says, to show how entirely his lady's heart has changed towards him. The _ballata_ and the _estampida_ were dance-songs, but very few examples survive. Certain love letters also remain to us, but as these are written in rimed couplets and in narrative style, they can hardly be classified as lyric poetry.