The star about the Pole
conceals
its bright rays.
Troubador Verse
Many dates and facts are conjecture, and so the order of the poets is at times somewhat arbitrary where dates of birth and death are uncertain. I have not translated the vidas, or biographical lives of the poets, which are highly unreliable, though charming as legend, but have referred to them where relevant.
Anonymous (10th Century)
The manuscript of this bilingual text, which has been termed the first alba or dawn song, made of Latin stanzas with an apparently Provencal refrain, is thought to have come from the monastery of Fleury-sur-Loire. Though not strictly a troubadour text, it is a first example of a form, the alba, adopted later. The refrain is: L'alb' apar, tumet mar at ra'sol; po y pas, a! bigil, mira clar tenebras!
Phebi claro nondum orto iubare
With pale Phoebus, in the clear east, not yet bright,
Aurora sheds, on earth, ethereal light:
While the watchman, to the idle, cries: 'Arise! '
Dawn now breaks; sunlight rakes the swollen seas;
Ah, alas! It is he! See there, the shadows pass!
Behold, the heedless, torpid, yearn to try
And block the insidious entry, there they lie,
Whom the herald summons urging them to rise.
Dawn now breaks; sunlight rakes the swollen seas;
Ah, alas! It is he! See there, the shadows pass!
From Arcturus, the North Wind soon separates.
The star about the Pole conceals its bright rays.
Towards the east the Plough its brief journey makes.
Dawn now breaks; sunlight rakes the swollen seas;
Now, alas! It is he!
Note: The third verse suggests a summer sky in northern latitudes, say late July, when Arcturus sets in the north-west at dawn.
Guillaume de Poitiers (1071-1127)
William or Guillem IX, called The Troubador, was Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of Poitou, as William VII, between 1086, when he was aged only fifteen, and his death. Refusing to take part in the first crusade of 1098, he was one of the leaders of the minor Crusade of 1101 which was a military failure. He was the 'first' troubadour, that is, the first recorded vernacular lyric poet, in the Occitan language. Threatened with excommunication several times for his dissolute life and challenges to Church authority, he was later reconciled. He married his 'step-daughter' Anor, to his son, later Guilhem X, and in turn their daughter Alianor (Eleanor), Duchess of Aquitaine and Countess of Poitou, became Queen of France, and by her second marriage to Henry, Duke of Normandy, later Henry II, became Queen of England also. She was the mother of the Young King Henry, Richard Coeur de Lion, Geoffrey of Brittany and John Lackland.
Ab la dolchor del temps novel
Out of the sweetness of the spring,
The branches leaf, the small birds sing,
Each one chanting in its own speech,
Forming the verse of its new song,
Then is it good a man should reach
For that for which he most does long.
From finest sweetest place I see
No messenger, no word for me,
So my heart can't laugh or rest,
And I don't dare try my hand,
Until I know, and can attest,
That all things are as I demand.
This love of ours it seems to be
Like a twig on a hawthorn tree
That on the tree trembles there
All night, in rain and frost it grieves,
Till morning, when the rays appear
Among the branches and the leaves.
So the memory of that dawn to me
When we ended our hostility,
And a most precious gift she gave,
Her loving friendship and her ring:
Let me live long enough, I pray,
Beneath her cloak my hand to bring.
I've no fear that tongues too free
Might part me from Sweet Company,
I know with words how they can stray
In gossip, yet that's a fact of life:
No matter if others boast of love,
We have the loaf, we have the knife!
