Wine, Women, and Song | Page 9

Teutonic
authorship, since this Confession is addressed to a German prelate.
Here it may be noticed that the proper names of places and people are

frequently altered to suit different countries; while in some cases they
are indicated by an N, sufficiently suggestive of their generality. Thus
the Confession of Golias in the Carmina Burana_ mentions _Electe
Coloniae; in an English version, introduces Praesul Coventriae. The
prayer for alms, which I have translated in Section xiii., is addressed to
Decus N----, thou honour of Norwich town, or Wittenberg, or wherever
the wandering scholar may have chanced to be.
With regard to the form and diction of the Carmina Vagorum, it is
enough to say two things at the present time. First, a large portion of
these pieces, including a majority of the satires and longer descriptive
poems, are composed in measures borrowed from hymnology, follow
the diction of the Church, and imitate the double-rhyming rhythms of
her sequences. It is not unnatural, this being the case, that parodies of
hymns should be comparatively common. Of these I shall produce
some specimens in the course of this study. Secondly, those which do
not exhibit popular hymn measures are clearly written for melodies,
some of them very complicated in structure, suggesting part-songs and
madrigals, with curious interlacing of long and short lines, double and
single rhymes, recurrent ritournelles, and so forth.
The ingenuity with which these poets adapted their language to the
exigencies of the tune, taxing the fertility of Latin rhymes, and setting
off the long sonorous words to great advantage, deserves admiring
comment. At their best, it is almost impossible to reproduce in English
the peculiar effects of their melodic artifices. But there is another side
to the matter. At their worst, these Latin lyrics, moulded on a tune,
degenerate into disjointed verbiage, sound and adaptation to song
prevailing over sense and satisfaction to the mind. It must, however, be
remembered that such lyrics, sometimes now almost unintelligible,
have come down to us with a very mutilated text, after suffering the
degradations through frequent oral transmission to which popular
poetry is peculiarly liable.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 14: The more I study the songs of love and wine in this
codex, the more convinced am I that they have their origin for the most

part in South-Western Germany, Bavaria, the Bodensee, and Elsass.]
IX.
It is easier to say what the Goliardi wrote about than who the writers
were, and what they felt and thought than by what names they were
baptised. The mass of their literature, as it is at present known to us,
divides into two broad classes. The one division includes poems on the
themes of vagabond existence, the truant life of these capricious
students; on spring-time and its rural pleasure; on love in many phases
and for divers kinds of women; lastly, on wine and on the dice-box.
The other division is devoted to graver topics; to satires on society,
touching especially the Roman Court, and criticising eminent
ecclesiastics in all countries; to moral dissertations, and to discourses
on the brevity of life.
Of the two divisions, the former yields by far the livelier image of the
men we have to deal with. It will therefore form the staple of my
argument. The latter blends at so many points with medieval literature
of the monastic kind, that it is chiefly distinguished by boldness of
censure and sincerity of invective. In these qualities the serious poems
of the Goliardi, emanating from a class of men who moved behind the
scenes and yet were free to speak their thoughts, are unique. Written
with the satirist's eye upon the object of his sarcasm, tinged with the
license of his vagabondage, throbbing with the passionate and
nonchalant afflatus of the wine-cup, they wing their flight like poisoned
arrows or plumed serpents with unerring straightness at abuses in high
places.
The wide space occupied by Nature in the secular poems of the
Goliardi is remarkable. As a background to their love-songs we always
find the woods and fields of May, abundant flowers and gushing
rivulets, lime-trees and pines and olive-trees, through which soft winds
are blowing. There are rose-bowers and nightingales; fauns, nymphs,
and satyrs dancing on the sward. Choirs of mortal maidens emerge in
the midst of this Claude-landscape. The scene, meanwhile, has been
painted from experience, and felt with the enthusiasm of affection. It
breathes of healthy open air, of life upon the road, of casual joys and

wayside pleasure, snatched with careless heart by men whose tastes are
natural. There is very little of the alcove or the closet in this verse; and
the touch upon the world is so infantine, so tender, that we are
indulgent to the generalities with which the poets deal.
What has been said about popular poetry applies