Wine, Women, and Song | Page 3

Burana, and under that
designation I shall refer to it. The other is a Harleian MS., written
before 1264, which Mr. Thomas Wright collated with other English
MSS., and published in 1841 under the name of _Latin Poems
commonly attributed to Walter Mapes_.
These two sources have to some extent a common stock of poems,
which proves the wide diffusion of the songs in question before the
date assignable to the earlier of the two MS. authorities. But while this
is so, it must be observed that the Carmina Burana are richer in
compositions which form a prelude to the Renaissance; the English
collections, on the other hand, contain a larger number of serious and
satirical pieces anticipating the Reformation.
Another important set of documents for the study of the subject are the
three large works of Edelstand du Méril upon popular Latin poetry;
while the stores at our disposal have been otherwise augmented by
occasional publications of German and English scholars, bringing to
light numerous scattered specimens of a like description. Of late it has

been the fashion in Germany to multiply anthologies of medieval
student-songs, intended for companion volumes to the Commersbuch.
Among these, one entitled Gaudeamus (Teubner, 2d edition, 1879)
deserves honourable mention.
It is my purpose to give a short account of what is known about the
authors of these verses, to analyse the general characteristics of their art,
and to illustrate the theme by copious translations. So far as I am aware,
the songs of Wandering Students offer almost absolutely untrodden
ground to the English translator; and this fact may be pleaded in excuse
for the large number which I have laid under contribution.
In carrying out my plan, I shall confine myself principally, but not
strictly, to the Carmina Burana. I wish to keep in view the anticipation
of the Renaissance rather than to dwell upon those elements which
indicate an early desire for ecclesiastical reform.
IV.
We have reason to conjecture that the Romans, even during the
classical period of their literature, used accentual rhythms for popular
poetry, while quantitative metres formed upon Greek models were the
artificial modes employed by cultivated writers. However this may be,
there is no doubt that, together with the decline of antique civilisation,
accent and rhythm began to displace quantity and metre in Latin
versification. Quantitative measures, like the Sapphic and Hexameter,
were composed accentually. The services and music of the Church
introduced new systems of prosody. Rhymes, both single and double,
were added to the verse; and the extraordinary flexibility of medieval
Latin--that sonorous instrument of varied rhetoric used by Augustine in
the prose of the Confessions, and gifted with poetic inspiration in such
hymns as the Dies Irae_ or the Stabat Mater_--rendered this new
vehicle of literary utterance adequate to all the tasks imposed on it by
piety and metaphysic. The language of the Confessions_ and the _Dies
Irae is not, in fact, a decadent form of Cicero's prose or Virgil's verse,
but a development of the Roman speech in accordance with the new
conditions introduced by
Christianity. It remained comparatively

sterile in the department of prose composition, but it attained to high
qualities of art in the verse and rhythms of men like Thomas of Celano,
Thomas of Aquino, Adam of St. Victor, Bernard of Morlais, and
Bernard of Clairvaux. At the same time, classical Latin literature
continued to be languidly studied in the cloisters and the schools of
grammar. The metres of the ancients were practised with uncouth and
patient assiduity, strenuous efforts being made to keep alive an art
which was no longer rightly understood. Rhyme invaded the hexameter,
and the best verses of the medieval period in that measure were leonine.
The hymns of the Church and the secular songs composed for music in
this base Latin took a great variety of rhythmic forms. It is clear that
vocal melody controlled their movement; and one fixed element in all
these compositions was rhyme--rhyme often intricate and complex
beyond hope of imitation in our language. Elision came to be
disregarded; and even the accentual values, which may at first have
formed a substitute for quantity, yielded to musical notation. The
epithet of popular belongs to these songs in a very real sense, since they
were intended for the people's use, and sprang from popular emotion.
Poems of this class were technically known as moduli--a name which
points significantly to the importance of music in their structure.
Imitations of Ovid's elegiacs or of Virgil's hexameters obtained the
name of versus. Thus Walter of Lille, the author of a regular epic poem
on Alexander, one of the best medieval writers of versus, celebrates his
skill in the other department of popular poetry thus--
"Perstrepuit modulis Gallia tota meis."
(All France rang with my
songs.)
We might compare the