[5] In the second-mentioned poem the instruction takes the whimsical form of a reproof to a joglar for _not_ knowing the various subjects mentioned in the text. ‘I will tell you the truth without a lie,’ the ingenuous poet opens his diatribe; ‘you are a bad fiddler and worse singer from beginning to end.’ [6] Pulci says that Angelo Poliziano called his attention to Arnaut’s work, in acknowledgment evidently of what he considered a remarkable antiquarian achievement. [7] ‘Galahalt’ was the go-between of the Queen and her lover. The word became nationalised in Italian as equivalent to ‘Pandar.’ [8] This kind of personal apprenticeship to a renowned troubadour, be it here parenthetically stated, was, in the good times, the common way of acquiring the complicated and difficult art of poetry. Other poets taught themselves with the assistance of the great models preserved in writing, or transmitted by word of mouth and sound of voice or fiddle. Jaufre Rudel says prettily, that meadows and orchards, trees and flowers, and the cries and songs of wild birds have been his teachers. The ‘Academies,’ _i.e._ teaching and examining bodies, were, like the schools of the German master singers, creations of a late epoch. [9] M. Damase Arbaud some time ago published a charming collection of popular ditties (‘Chants Populaires de Provence,’ Aix, 1862), containing amongst other pieces some beautiful Christmas songs or _noëls_ evidently of great antiquity, although still sung in Provence. Some of these poems, the editor believes, date back from the times of the Troubadours. But the oral tradition to which they owe their preservation has unfortunately changed their linguistic character beyond recognition. [10] The _senhal_ or pseudonym of his lady-love. [11] Songs of dispute or contention. [12] ‘The other day by the roadside I heard a shepherd sing a song, which said: “False traitors have killed me.” And when he saw me approach, he jumped to his feet to do me honour and said, ‘God be with you, sir; for now I have found a friend, leal and discreet and without falsehood to whom I may complain of love.’ [13] A curious exception to this rule occurs in a _balada_ published by Professor Bartsch from a Paris manuscript. It is evidently written in imitation of a popular model, and differs _in toto_ from the spirit and diction of the poetry of the Troubadours, with which it has nothing in common but the language. Here we have a refrain of purely musical significance at the end of some of the lines, and also the exclamation of the dancers referred to in the text. Here also, curiously enough, the words take a narrative turn, thus seeming to foreshadow the gradual transition of the term ballad from its old to its modern meaning. A stanza may follow here:—