A l’entrada del tems clar, eya, Per joya recomençar, eya, E per jelos irritar, eya, Vol la regina mostrar Q’el’est est si amoroza. Alavi’, alavia, jelos, Laissaz nos, laissaz nos Ballar entre nos, entre nos. (‘At the beginning of the bright season, eya, in order to begin again joy, eya, and to irritate the jealous, eya, the queen resolves to show how amorous she is. Away, away, ye jealous, let us, let us, dance by ourselves, by ourselves’). [14] An article in the _Cornhill Magazine_ (July 1877), called a ‘Plea for certain Exotic Forms of Verse,’ may be consulted with advantage, as regards the adoption of these French metres by some modern English poets. For modern French poetry, that charming volume ‘Petit Traité de Poésie,’ by Théodore de Banville, is the chief source. Of the mediæval development of his own language and the _langue d’oc_ M. de Banville unfortunately says little or nothing. Villon seems the earliest author known to him. Rutebœuf he ignores. [15] According to the _Leys d’amors_, this choice of one of two arguments proposed by one troubadour to another, is the characteristic feature of the _partimen_ in distinction from the _tenso_ generally. [16] A notorious freebooter of the time. [17] Attacks on the morals of the clergy are frequent in Provençal literature; but of poems containing heretical opinions in matters of dogma I know only one, by Peire Cardinal. It is a passionate plea against the eternity of punishment, and might have been quoted with advantage in a recent ecclesiastical trial. It is, however, by no means unlikely that other poems of heterodox import may have been accidentally or wilfully destroyed in the course of ages. The fact that a bull of Pope Innocent IV., dated 1245, prohibits to students the use of Provençal, as a language of heretics, tends to confirm this surmise. [18] This poem may be found in Bartsch’s ‘Chrestomathie Provençale,’ 2nd edition, p. 55. [19] The exact meaning of the word _sirventes_ is not easy to define. It is evidently derived from the Latin verb _servire_, and may therefore loosely be rendered as the ‘song of a serving-man in praise or in the interest of his master.’ The _Leys d’amors_ calls the _sirventes_ ‘a song which contains censure and vituperation, and castigates wicked and malignant people.’ This tolerably meets the case. The use of the word by later grammarians for a song in praise of the Virgin is a manifest corruption of its original meaning. [20] The characteristic change between plural and singular in the lady’s address to Guillem adds greatly to the impressiveness of the original. Here, for instance, she says, ‘Eram digaz (Tell _you_ me), t’es tu anquera (hast _thou_ found out),’ etc. [21] See the interlinear version of it; Index, ii. [22] Another biographer adds with ghastly accuracy, ‘_a pebrada_,’ with pepper—‘devilled,’ as we should say.