Anglo-Norman Literature - Lyric Poetry

Lyric Poetry

The only extant songs of any importance are the seventy-one Ballads of Gower (Stengel, Gower's Minnesang, 1886). The remaining songs are mostly of a religious character. Most of them have been discovered and published by Paul Meyer (Bulletin de la Soc. Anc. Textes, 1889; Not. et Extr. xxxiv; Rom. xiii. 518, t. xiv. 370; xv. p. 254, &c.). Although so few have come down to us such songs must have been numerous at one time, owing to the constant intercourse between English, French and Provençals of all classes. An interesting passage in Piers Plowman furnishes us with a proof of the extent to which these songs penetrated into England. We read of:

"... dykers and deluers that doth here dedes ille,

And dryuen forth the longe day with 'Deu, vous saue,

Dame Emme!'" (Prologue, 223 f.)

One of the finest productions of Anglo-Norman lyric poetry written in the end of the 13th century, is the Plainte d'amour (Vising, Göteborg, 1905; Romania xiii. 507, xv. 292 and xxix. 4), and we may mention, merely as literary curiosities, various works of a lyrical character written in two languages, Latin and French, or English and French, or even in three languages, Latin, English and French. In Early English Lyrics (Oxford, 1907) we have a poem in which a lover sends to his mistress a love-greeting composed in three languages, and his learned friend replies in the same style (De amico ad amicam, Responcio, viii and ix).