NORMAN VERNA POETRY. useful and more creditable than the licentious songs CHAP. of the minstrels, the improved taste of the nation IV. liberally encouraged it. The new poetry found am- ANGLOple patronage, and the patronage multiplied both the new rhymers and their works.16 Wace, a canon CULAR of Bayeux, and one of the most prolific rhymers that ever practised the art, states expressly, that his works were composed for the "rich gentry who had rents and money."" He prudently reminds the great, that unless "par clerc" their actions were recorded, their celebrity could have no duration; 18 and he takes care to inform them, that they who wrote "gestes and histories" had always been highly honored and beloved,19 and that barons and noble ladies had often 16 The clerical poets took high ground: they declared their works to be essential to the formation of reputable character. Thus Beneoit, in his rhymed chronicle of Normandy: Therefore He Oir veeir, apprendre faire Retenir, ourer e retraire, Senz ceo ne puet de nul eage, Nuls estre pruz, vaillant, ne sage; E maistre des arz e des leis. VI. HISTORYOF ENGLAND. BOOK given handsome presents, to have their names.commemorated.20 The clergy thus aiming at the remuLITERARY neration for which the minstrels sang, we shall not be surprised that they also sometimes took their subjects from the songs of the itinerant jongleurs, and revived them in a superior style. This fact is avowed in the preface to one of the romans on Charlemagne ; "1 and also in the Roman du Florimont.22 The consequence of the clergy making these compositions was, that narrative poetry, or, what was believed to be and written as such, became soon a respectable, a highly valued and an improving art, operating So, 20 Suvent aveient des barruns, E des nobles dames beaus duns, Pur mettre lur nuns en estoire, Que tuz tens mais fust de eus memoire,-MS. Ib. 21 21 One of the romans on Charlemagne, in rhyme, Brit. Museum, Bib. Reg. 15. E 6. explicitly states, That a Clerc had composed and revived it from a chançon of a jongleour— Or entendez seigneurs, que Dieu vous benie, 22 This was written by Aymes de Florimont. He says he has said it as he found it written, or as he took it from good Trouveurs : Dou roy Florimont vous ai dit Ce que jeu ai trouvé escript; Or pri a ceuz qui oi lont E as bons trouveurs qui sont. MS. Harl. No 3983. That the minstrels had composed romans on the subjects which the clerical rhymers so prodigiously expanded, the Chronicon du Guesclin states Qui veut avoir renom des bons et des vaillons, powerfully in augmenting the intellectual cultivation CHAP. of the people. IV. VERNA POETRY. It is a question that tasks our ingenuity to solve: ANGLOHow came the Scandinavian Normans, who settled NORMAN themselves in Normandy, with their Norwegian or CULAR Icelandic speech, to abandon this so entirely, and to adopt that dialect of the Roman popular language which appears in the Anglo-Norman poems, so completely, as that this alone became the vernacular tongue both of their court and country, at the period of the Norman conquest? We can only thus explain it. The Romans had so completely conquered and colonized Gaul, that its Celtic language gave way in most parts to a Patois Latin, which was the general language there until the Franks became its masters. They came with their Franco-Theotisc tongue; but altho they converted the name of the country from Gaul to France, they did not impress their German speech on the people at large. The Roman Patois maintained its ground in the south of France, in the regions on the Mediterranean: and when the German portion of Charlemagne's great empire separated from the French sovereign's, the Latin Patois obtained in time such an ascendency, that it was adopted for ever by the court and nobility of France. It was the popular speech of Normandy when Rollo invaded; and the number of his soldiers and chiefs was so small, compared with the people over whom they became the temporal lords, that policy and convenience induced the Norman dukes, his successors, to learn and patronize the popular tongue; hence this became the general language of Normandy, and was brought as such by the conqueror into England. We see it in its earliest form in his VI. BOOK laws, and in the poems which we are about to mention of Phillippe du Than, and we see its rapid LITERARY improvement after it was used for poetry, in the HISTORY OF Smooth and fluent works of Wace, Beneoit, and Gaimar. ENGLAND. Philip du Than's poems. The most ancient specimens of the vernacular poetry of the Anglo-Norman clerks, are the two poems by Phillippe du Than, which may be placed about 1120. They contain nearly 1800 lines, rhymed in the middle.23 His first, entitled ' De Creaturis,' he sent to his uncle, the chaplain of the seneschal of Henry I., for his correction."4 Besides its rhymes, there is a rhythm in the cadence of his lines, which shews the infant state of the French heroic verse. It treats on the days of the week; on the months; on the signs of the zodiac; at some length on the moon; and on the ecclesiastic periods of the year; from most of which he draws a fanciful allegorical signification. His second he names Bestiarius,' and addresses it to the mult bele femme,' the queen Aliz,25 the second wife of Henry I. Its subjects are, beasts, birds, and precious stones. The first are subjected to us, and are therefore symbols of obedience, and consequently denote our childhood; the second fly naturally 23 MS. Cotton Library, Nero, A. 5.-This and some other of the AngloNorman poets remained unnoticed in the British Museum, till the Abbe de la Rue saw and described them. See his papers, published by the Antiquarian Society, in the Archaeologia, vols. xii. & xiii. 24 Philippe du Thaun ad fait une raisun. A sun uncle l'enveiet, que amender la deiet. A unfrei de Thaun, le chapelain Yhun, E seneschal du rei icho vus de par mei.-MS. Nero. 25 Philippe du Thaun en franceise raisun, Ad estrait bestiare un livere de grammaire. Pur louur d'une geme ki mult est bele femme. Aliz est numée, reine est corunée. Reine est d'Engleterre, sa ame nait ja guere.—MS. Ib. IV. into the air, and thus designate men who meditate CHAP. heavenly things; the last are of themselves perma→ nent and unchangeable, and such will be the ineffable ANGLODeity to us when we hymn in his presence, and amid VERNAthe glory of his assembled saints. In this he quotes several times' Phisiologus," and at others, a work called Bestiarium; " another which he named Lapidaire" and Isidorus.29 These works are all still in existence. The Bestiaire is a Latin work remaing still in MS. which I have not yet seen. 30 But the Phisiologus is connected with some other subjects of curious inquiry, and therefore demands a particular notice. It is the performance of one Theobald, of whom, all that we know is from the titles prefixed to the different MSS. of the works.31 In one in the British Museum," he ends with naming himself 'Tebaldi.' 26 Thus, Phisiologus del Egle dit plus.'-MS. p. 67. 'Et Phisiologus dit que Caladrius.'—p. 68. And in other places, to which I do not find corresponding ones in Thebald; as on the Fenix,' p. 70, and Cocodrill,' p. 50. "Delui dit Bestiaire, chose que mult est maire.'-MS. p. 70. < En un livre dit du grammaire, que nous apelum Bestiaire.' 25 On the precious stones, he thus begins: Ke plus volt savoir de ces pierres, lur vertuz et lur maneres ; 29 As on the dove, MS. p. 80. Uns colums est ceo dit Ysidre en sun escrit.'-p. 72. He also cites Solomon on the ant; 'I ceo de Salemun del furmie par raisun.'-p. 52. And in other places. In his first poem, he quotes Johannes de Garlandia, Hilperic, Turkil, and Nambroet. La Rue, Arch. v. 12. p. 302. 30 M. La Rue mentions, that Mr. Douce has a MS. copy of it in Latin. 31 Fabricius in his Bib. Med. Lat. notices him only to say, that his age was uncertain. * Harleian MS. N° 3093. See note 38. NORMAN CULAR POETRY. |