Avril Part 11

_Mais elle etoit du monde, ou les plus belles choses Ont le pire destin; Et rose elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses L'es.p.a.ce d'un matin._

_Puis quand ainsi seroit que, selon ta priere, Elle auroit obtenu D'avoir en cheveux blancs termine sa carriere, Qu'en fut-il avenu?_

_Penses-tu que, plus vieille, en la maison celeste Elle eut eu plus d'accueil, Ou qu'elle eut moins senti la poussiere funeste Et les vers du cercueil?_

_De moi, deja deux fois d'une pareille foudre Je me suis vu perclus; Et deux fois la raison m'a si bien fait resoudre, Qu'il ne m'en souvient plus._

_Non qu'il ne me soit mal que la tombe possede Ce qui me fut si cher; Mais en un accident qui n'a point de remede, Il n'en faut point chercher._

_La Mort a des rigueurs a nulle autre pareilles: On a beau la prier; La cruelle qu'elle est se bouche les oreilles, Et nous laisse crier._

_Le pauvre en sa cabane, ou le chaume le couvre, Est sujet a ses lois; Et la garde qui veille aux barrieres du Louvre N'en defend point nos rois._

_De murmurer contre elle et perdre patience, Il est mal a propos; Vouloir ce que Dieu veut est la seule science Qui nous met en repos._

"_Vouloir ce que Dieu veut est la seule science Qui nous met en repos._"

NOTES.

CHARLES OF ORLEANS.

THE COMPLAINT.

Line 5. _Prins._ An inaccurate pedantic past participle of _prendre_.

Line 14. _Faulse._ There is to be noted here and elsewhere throughout these extracts, until the modern spelling at the close of the period, the redundant "l" in many words. It was an effect of pure pedantry. The latin "l" had become _u_ in northern French. _Falsa_ made, naturally, "Fausse." The partial learning of the later middle ages reintroduced an "l" which was not known to be transformed, but was thought omitted.

Line 24. _Liesse._ One of the commonest words of this epoch, lost to modern French. It means joy=_laet.i.tia_.

Line 25. Note the gender of "Amour," feminine even in the singular throughout the middle ages and renaissance--right up to the seventeenth century.

THE TWO ROUNDELS OF SPRING.

I

Line 1. _Fourriers._ The servants who go before to find lodging. The term survives in French military terminology. The _Fourriers_ are the non-commissioned officers and party who go forward and mark the Billeting of a regiment.

Line 9. _Pieca=il y a piece_; "lately". _Cf._ _naguere_="_il n'y a guere...."_

Line 11. _Prenez pais_="take the fields," begone.

Line 19. Note "_Chant_," the regular form of the subjunctive=_Cantet_.

The only latin vowel preserved after the tonic syllable is a=French e (mute). Thus _contat_="chante" which form has in modern French usurped the subjunctive.

Line 23. _Livree_="Liberata," _i.e._, things given out. A term originally applied not only to clothing, but to the general allowance of the king's household. Hence our word "livery."

THE FAREWELL.

Line 2. _Chiere lie._ "Happy countenance." _Chiere_ here is the substantive, _lie_=_laeta_, is the adjective. _Bonne chere_ means "a good time" where _chere_ is an old word for "head" (Greek: kara).

Line 5. _Baillie_=Bailliwick, "For Age that has me now within her bounds."

Line 7. _Mye._ "Crumb". "I am not a whit (not a crumb) with her (_Joie_) to-day."

Line 15. "Well braced," literally "well girthed" (as a horse is).

VILLON.

THE DEAD LADIES.

Stanza 1, line 1. Note the redundant negative; it is characteristic of mediaeval French, as of all primitive work, that the general suggestion of doubt is sufficient to justify a redundant negative.

Line 2. _Flora_, etc. It is worth while knowing who these women were.

_Flora_ is Juvenal's Flora (Sat. II. 9), a legend in the university. Of _Archipiada_ I know nothing. _Thas_ was certainly the Egyptian courtesan turned anch.o.r.ess and canonized, famous in the middle ages and revived to-day in the repulsive masterpiece of M. Anatole France.

_Elois_ is, of course, _Helose_, and _Esbaillart_ is Abelard. The queen, who in the legend had Buridan (and many others) drowned, was the Dowager of Burgundy that lived in the Tour de Nesle, where the Palais Mazarin is now, and had half the university for a lover: in sober history she founded that college of Burgundy from which the ecole de Medecine is descended; the legend about her is first heard of (save in this poem) in 1471, from the pen of a German in Leipzig. _Blanche_ may be Blanche of Castille, but more likely she was a vision of Villon's own, for what did St. Louis' mother ever sing? _Berte_ is the legendary mother of Charlemagne in the Epics; _Beatris_ is any Beatrice you choose, for they have all died. _Allis_ may just possibly be one of the Troubadour heroines, more likely she is here introduced for rhyme and metre; _Haremburgis_ is strictly historical: she was the Heiress of Maine who married Foulque of Anjou in 1110 and died in 1126: an ancestress, therefore, of the Plantagenets. _Jehanne_ is, of course, Joan of Arc.

Line 8. _D'Antan_ is _not_ "Yester-year." It is "Ante annum," all time past before _this_ year. Rossetti's "Yester-year" moreover, is an absurd and affected neologism; "Antan" is an excellent and living French word.

Stanza II, line 2. Note the p.r.o.nunciation of "Moyne" to rhyme (more or less) with "eine": the oi, ai and ei sounds were very similar till the sixteenth century at earliest. They are interchangeable in many popular provincialisms and in some words, _e.g._, Fouet, p.r.o.nounced "Foit" the same tendency survives. The transition began in the beginning of the seventeenth century as we learn from Vaugelas: and the influence towards the modern sound came from the Court.

Stanza III, line 2. _Seraine_="Syren."

Line 5. "_Jehanne_", "_Jehan_", in spite of the cla.s.sical survival in their spelling, were monosyllables from the earliest times.

Line 7. The "_elles_" here would not scan but for the elided "e" in "_souv'raine_" at the end of the line. In some editions "_ils_" is found and _souveraine_ is spelt normally. _Ils_ and _els_ for a feminine plural existed in the middle ages.

_Envoi._ The envoi needs careful translation. The "que" of the third line="sans que" and the whole means, "Do not ask this week or this year where they are, _without_ letting this refrain haunt you". "Que" might possibly mean "de peur que", did not the whole sense of the poem forbid such an interpretation.

AN EXCERPT FROM THE GRANT TESTAMENT.

Stanza 75, line 4. A charming example of those "flashes" which reveal Villon.

Stanza 76, line 2. Note the spelling of _Grant_ in the feminine without an _e_. Adjectives of the third declension whose feminine was not distinguishable in Latin took no "e" in early French. A survival of this is found in grand' rue, grand' messe, etc.

Line 5. _Grant erre_, "quickly", and the whole line reads: "Let it (my body) be delivered to it (luy=la terre) quickly," the "erre" here is from the popular late Latin "_iterare_"="_iter facere_". It survives in the nautical idiom "reprendre son erre"="to get under weigh again."

Line 7. "_Erre_" here comes, on the contrary, from _errare_, to make a mistake, to err.

Stanza 77, line 4. _Maillon._ Swaddling clothes.

Line 5. _Boullon_, sc.r.a.pe. The two lines are obscure but seem to read: "He has got me out of many a sc.r.a.pe which gave him no joy" (_esioye_ from _esjouir_=_rejouir_).