Chapter II: Introduction

Portuguese literature may be said to belong largely to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Europe can boast of no fresher and more charming early lyrics than those which slept forgotten[1] in the Vatican Library until the late Professor Ernesto Monaci published _Il Canzoniere Portoghese_ in 1875. And, to take a few more instances out of many, the poems of King Alfonso X, of extraordinary interest alike to historian and literary critic, first appeared in 1889; the plays of Gil Vicente were almost unknown before the Hamburg (1834) edition, based on the Göttingen copy of that of 1562; Sá de Miranda only received a definitive edition in 1885; the _Cancioneiro Geral_ became accessible in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the three volumes of the Stuttgart edition were published; the exquisite verses[1] of Sá de Meneses, which haunted Portuguese poetry for a century,[2] then sank into oblivion till they were discovered by Dr. Sousa Viterbo in the Torre do Tombo.[3] The abundant literature of popular _quadras_, _fados_, _romances_, _contos_ has only begun to be collected in the last fifty years.

In prose, the most important _Leal Conselheiro_[4] of King Duarte was rediscovered in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale and first printed in 1842, and Zurara’s _Cronica da Guiné_, lost even in the days of Damião de Goes,[5] similarly in 1841; Corrêa’s _Lendas da India_ remained in manuscript till 1858; so notable a book as King João I’s _Livro da Montaria_ appears only in the twentieth century, in an edition by Dr. Esteves Pereira, and the first trustworthy text of a part of Fernam Lopez was published by Snr. Braamcamp Freire in 1915; D. Francisco Manuel de Mello, who at the end of his second _Epanaphora_ wrote ‘Se por ventura tambem despois de meus dias acontece que algum vindouro honre ao meu nome quanto eu procuro eternizar e engrandecer o dos passados’, had to wait two and a half centuries before this debt was paid by Mr. Edgar Prestage.[6] Even now no really complete history of Portuguese literature exists, but the first systematic work on the subject was written by Friedrich Bouterwek in 1804. Other histories have since appeared, and during the last half-century the ceaseless, ingenious, and enthusiastic studies of Dr. Theophilo Braga have sifted Portuguese literature, chiefly the poetry, in all directions, and a flood of light has been thrown on it by the works of D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. Perhaps, therefore, one may be forgiven for having been tempted to render some account of this ‘new’ literature which continues to be so strangely neglected in England and other countries.[7] Yet a quarter of a century hence would perhaps offer better conditions, and a summary written at the present time cannot hope to be complete or definitive. Every year new studies and editions appear, new researches and alluring theories and discoveries are made. The Lisbon Academy of Sciences during its long and honourable history[8] has rarely if ever rendered greater services--‘essential services’ as Southey called them in 1803--to Portuguese literature. A short history of that literature must, apart from unavoidable errors and omissions, do less than justice to many writers. In appropriating the words of Damião de Goes, ‘Haud ignari plurima esse a nobis omissa quibus Hispania ornatur et celebrari possit,’ one may hope that MR. EDGAR PRESTAGE, who has studied Portuguese literature for a quarter of a century,[9] and whose ever-ready help and advice are here gratefully acknowledged, will eventually write a mellower history in several volumes and give their full due both to the classics and to contemporary authors and critics.

No one can study Portuguese literature without becoming deeply indebted to D. CAROLINA WILHELMA MICHAËLIS DE VASCONCELLOS. Her concise history, contributed to Groeber’s _Grundriss_ (1894), necessarily forms the basis of subsequent studies, but indeed her work is as vast as it is scholarly and accurate, and the student finds himself constantly relying on her guidance. Even if he occasionally disagrees, he cannot fail to give her point of view the deepest attention and respect. Born in 1851, the daughter of Professor Gustav Michaëlis, she has lived in Portugal during the last forty years and is the wife of the celebrated art critic, Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos (born in 1849). Her edition of the _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_ (1904) is a masterpiece of historical reconstruction and literary criticism, and her influence on Portuguese literature generally is as wide as her encouragement and assistance of younger scholars are generous.[10] _Femina_, as was said of the Princess Maria, _undequaque spectatissima et doctissima_.

Most of the works of DR. THEOPHILO BRAGA are of too provisional a nature to be of permanent value, but a summary, _Edade Medieval_ (1909), _Renascença_ (1914), _Os Seiscentistas_ (1916), _Os_ _Arcades_ (1918), gives his latest views. The best detailed criticism of the literature of the nineteenth century is that of DR. FIDELINO DE FIGUEIREDO, Member of the Academy of Sciences and Editor of the _Revista de Historia: Historia da Litteratura Romantica Portuguesa_ (1913) and _Historia da Litteratura Realista_ (1914).

The only completely methodical history of Portuguese literature in existence is the brief manual by the learned ex-Rector of Coimbra University, DR. JOAQUIM MENDES DOS REMEDIOS: _História da Literatura Portuguêsa_ (5th ed., Coimbra, 1921), since it contains that rarity in Portuguese literature: an index.[11] Dr. Figueiredo published a short essay in its general bibliography in 1914 (_Bibliographia portuguesa de critica litteraria_), largely increased in a new (1920) edition, but otherwise little has been done in this respect (apart from a few special authors). The bibliography attached to the present book[12] follows--_longo intervallo_--the lines of PROFESSOR JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY’S _Bibliographie de l’Histoire de la Littérature Espagnole_ (Paris, 1913). After its proved excellence it would, indeed, have been folly to adopt any other method.

It has been thought advisable to add a list of works on popular poetry, folk-lore, &c. (since in no country are the popular and the written literatures more intimately connected), and of those concerning the Portuguese language. Unless energetic and persistent measures are taken to protect this language it will be hopeless to look for a great Portuguese literature in the future. Yet with the gradually developing prosperity of Portugal and her colonies such expectations are not unfounded. A new poet may arise indigenous as Gil Vicente and technically proficient as Camões. And in prose, if it is not allowed to sink into a mere verbiage of gallicisms, great writers may place Portuguese on a level with and indeed above the other Romance languages. The possibilities are so vast, the quarry ready to their hand so rich--the works of Manuel Bernardes, Antonio Vieira, Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, Luis de Sousa, João de Lucena, Heitor Pinto, Arraez; an immense mass of sermons (_milhões de sermonarios_), most of them in excellent Portuguese, as those of Ceita, Veiga, Feo, Luz, in which, as in a large number of political tracts, notably those of Macedo, intense conviction has given a glow and concision to the language; old _constituições_, _ordenações_, and _foros_[13]; technical treatises,[14] folk-lore, popular phrases,[15] proverbs. But unless a scholarly use of Portuguese be more generally imposed no masterpieces will be produced. The same holds good of Brazilian literature, which, although, or perhaps because, it has provided material for a history in two portly volumes (Sylvio Romero, _Historia da Litteratura Brazileira_, 2nd ed., 1902-3), is here, with few exceptions, omitted.

A supplementary chapter on modern Galician literature has been added, for although the language from which Portuguese parted only after the fourteenth century is now quite independent,[16] modern Galician is not more different from modern Portuguese than is the language of the _Cancioneiros_ with which Portuguese literature opens. The Portuguese have always shown a strong aptitude for acquiring foreign languages, and the individual’s gain has been the literature’s loss. Jorge de Montemôr, who

con su Diana
Enriqueció la lengua castellana,

was not by any means the only Portuguese who wrote exclusively in Spanish, and others chose Latin. The reason usually given in either case was that Portuguese was less widely read.[17] It was a short-sighted view, for the more works of importance that were written in Portuguese the larger would naturally become the number of those who read them. While Portuguese literature may be taken to be the literature written in the Portuguese language, in a sense it must also include the Latin and Spanish works of Portuguese authors. Of the former, one collection alone, the _Corpus Illustrium Poetarum Lusitanorum qui latine scripserunt_ (Lisbonae, 1745), consists of eight volumes, and Domingo Garcia Peres’ _Catálogo Razonado_ (Madrid, 1890) contains over 600 names of Portuguese authors who wrote in Spanish.

Portuguese names present a difficulty, for often they are as lengthy as that which was the pride of Dona Iria in Ennes’ _O Saltimbanco_. The course here adopted is to relegate the full name to the index and to print in the text only the form by which the writer is generally known.[18]

The Portuguese, a proud and passionate people with a certain love of magnificence and adventure, an Athenian receptivity,[19] an extensive sea-board and vague land-frontiers, naturally came under foreign influences. Many and various causes made their country cosmopolitan from the beginning. It is customary to divide Portuguese literature into the Provençal (13th c.), Spanish (14th and 15th c.), Italian (16th c.), Spanish and Italian (17th c.), French and English (18th c.), French and German (19th c.) Schools. The question may therefore be asked, especially by those who confuse influence with imitation, as though it precluded originality: What has Portuguese literature of its own? In the first place, the Celtic satire and mystic lyrism of the Galicians is developed and always present in Portuguese literature. Secondly, the genius for story-telling, displayed by Fernam Lopez, grew by reason of the great Portuguese discoveries in Africa and Asia to an epic grandeur both in verse and prose. Thirdly, the absence of great cities, the pleasant climate, and fertile soil produced a peculiarly realistic and natural bucolic poetry. And in prose, besides masterpieces of history and travel--a rich and fascinating literature of the East and of the sea--a fervent religious faith, as in Spain, with a more constant mysticism than in Spain, led to very high achievement. Had one to choose between the loss of the works of Homer, or Dante, or Shakespeare, and that of the whole of Portuguese literature, the whole of Portuguese literature must go, but that is not to say that the loss would not be very grievous. Indeed, those who despise Portuguese literature despise it in ignorance,[20] affecting to believe, with Edgar Quinet, that it has but one poet and a single book; those who are acquainted with it--with the early lyrics, with the quaintly alluring eclogues of Ribeiro and Sá de Miranda, with the works of Fernam Lopez, described by Robert Southey as ‘the best chronicler of any age or nation’, _naïf, exact, touchant et philosophe_[21]; of Gil Vicente, almost as far above his contemporary Juan del Enzina as Shakespeare is above Vicente; of Bernardim Ribeiro, whose _Menina e moça_ is the earliest and best of those pastoral romances which led Don Quixote to contemplate a quieter sequel to his first adventures; of Camões, ‘not only the greatest lyric poet of his country, but one of the greatest lyric poets of all time’[22]; with Fernam Mendez Pinto’s travels, ‘as diverting a book of the kind as ever I read’[23]; or Corrêa’s _Lendas_, Frei Thomé de Jesus’ _Trabalhos_, or the incomparable prose of Manuel Bernardes--know that, extraordinary as were Portugal’s achievements in discovery and conquest, her literature is not unworthy of those achievements. Unhappily the Portuguese, with a notorious carelessness,[24] have in the past set the example of neglecting their literature, and even to-day scarcely seem to realize their great possessions and still greater possibilities in the realm of prose.[25] The excessive number of writers, the excessive production of each individual writer, and the _desleixo_ by which innumerable books and manuscripts of exceptional interest have perished, are all traceable to the same source: the lack of criticism. A nation of poets, essentially lyrical,[26] with no dramatic genius but capable of writing charmingly and naturally without apparent effort, needed and needs a severely classical education and stern critics, to remind them that an epic is not rhymed history nor blank verse mangled prose, that in bucolic poetry the half is greater than the whole, and to bid them abandon abstractions for the concrete and particular and crystallize the vague flow of their talent. But in Portugal, outside the circle of writers themselves, a reading public has hitherto hardly existed, and in the close atmosphere resulting the sense of proportion was inevitably lost, even as a stone and a feather will fall with equal speed in a vacuum. The criticism has been mainly personal,[27] contesting the originality or truthfulness of a writer, without considering the literary merits of his work. To deprecate such criticism became a commonplace of the preface, while numerous passages in writers of the sixteenth century show that they feared their countrymen’s scepticism, expressed in the proverb _De longas vias mui longas mentiras_, which occurs as early as the thirteenth century.[28] The fear of slovenly or prolix composition was not present in the same degree. But these are defects that may be remedied partly by individual critics, partly by the increasing number of readers. Meanwhile this little book may perhaps serve to corroborate the poet Falcão de Resende’s words:

Engenhos nascem bons na Lusitania
E ha copia delles.[29]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A few Portuguese sixteenth-century writers in touch with Italy may have known of their existence. But they were neglected as _rusticas musas_. The references to King Dinis as a poet by Antonio Ferreira and once in the _Cancioneiro Geral_ do not of course imply that his poems were known and read. André de Resende seems to have been more interested in tracing an ancestor, Vasco Martinez de Resende, than in the poets among whom this ancestor figured (see C. Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, _Randglosse_ XV in _Ztft. für rom. Phil._, xxv. 683).

[2] _Illud vero poemation quod vulgo circumfertur de Lessa ... nunc vera cum plurimum illud appetant_ ... (Soares, _Theatrum_). Cf. F. Rodriguez Lobo, _Primavera_, ed. 1722, pp. 240, 356, 469; Eloy de Sá de Sottomayor, _Ribeiras do Mondego_, f. 27 v., 28 v., 120-1, 186; _Canc. Geral_ of A. F. Barata (1836-1910), p. 235; Jeronimo Bahia, _Ao Mondego_ (_Fenix Ren._, ii. 377-9). Cf. Brito, _Mon. Lus._ 1. ii. 2: _O rio Leça celebre pelas rimas de nosso famoso poeta_.

[3] The documents of the Torre do Tombo are now in the able keeping of Dr. Pedro de Azevedo and Snr. Antonio Baião.

[4] Even its title was inaccurately given, as _O Fiel Conselheiro_ (Bernardo de Brito), _De Fideli Consiliario_ (N. Antonio, _Bib. Vetus_, ii. 241), _Del Buen Consejero_ (Faria e Sousa); correctly by Duarte Nunez de Leam. A _Conselheiro Fiel_ by Frei Manuel Guilherme (1658-1734) appeared in 1727.

[5] _De que não ha noticia_ (Goes, _Cronica de D. João_, cap. 6).

[6] _D. Francisco Manuel de Mello. Esboço biographico._ Coimbra, 1914, an admirably clear and very important work, in which much light from new documents is thrown on Mello’s life.

[7] It would be interesting to know how many English-speaking persons have ever heard of the great men and writers that were King Dinis, Fernam Lopez, Bernardim Ribeiro, Diogo Bernardez, Heitor Pinto, Frei Thomé de Jesus, Ferreira de Vasconcellos, Frei Luis de Sousa, Antonio Vieira, Manuel Bernardes. Their neglect has been largely due to the absence of good or easily available texts; there is still nothing to correspond to the Spanish _Biblioteca de Autores Españoles_ or the many more modern Spanish collections. But is not even Camões still ‘an abused stranger’, as Mickle called him in 1776?

[8] See F. de Figueiredo, _O que é a Academia das Sciencias de Lisboa_ (1779-1915) in _Revista da Historia_, vol. iv, 1915.

[9] His valuable study on Zurara, which has not been superseded by any later work on the subject, is dated 1896.

[10] She has, indeed, laid the Portuguese people under an obligation which it will not easily redeem. That no formal recognition has been bestowed in England on her work (as in another field on that of Dr. José Leite de Vasconcellos, of Snr. Braamcamp Freire, and of the late Dr. Francisco Adolpho Coelho) is a striking example of our insularity.

[11] It does not include living writers. Its dates must be received with caution.

[12] It has been found necessary to publish the bibliography separately.

[13] e. g. King Sancho II’s _Foros da Guarda_, printed, from a 1305 manuscript, in vol. v (1824) of the _Collecção de Ineditos_, or the _Foros de Santarem_ (1385). The _Livro Vermelho do Senhor D. Affonso V_, printed in the _Collecção de Livros Ineditos_, vol. iii (1793), is also full of interest.

[14] e.g. the fourteenth-century _Livro de Cetreria_ of PERO MENINO; MESTRE GIRALDO’S _Tratado das Enfermidades das Aves de Caça_ and _Livro d’Alveitaria_; the _Arte da Cavallaria de gineta e estardiota_ (1678) by ANTONIO GALVAM DE ANDRADE (1613?-89); _Correcçam de abusos introduzidos contra o verdadeiro methodo da medicina_ (2 pts., 1668-80) by the Carmelite FREI MANUEL DE AZEVEDO (†1672); _Agricultura das Vinhas_ (1711) by Vicente Alarte (i.e. SILVESTRE GOMEZ DE MORAES (1643-1723)); _Compendia de Botanica_ (2 vols., 1788) by FELIX DE AVELLAR BROTERO (1744-1828).

[15] Many will be found in _Portugalia_ and the _Revista Lusitana_.

[16] In the beginning of the sixteenth century Galician is already despised in Portugal, and became more so as Portuguese grew more latinized. Cf. Gil Vicente, ii. 509: _Pera que he falar galego Senão craro e despachado?_; Chiado, _Auto das Regateiras: Eu não te falo galego_.

[17] _Por ser lingua mais jêral_ (Vera, _Lovvores_), _mais universal_ (Sousa de Macedo). _Os grandes ingenios não se contentão de ter por espera de seu applauso a hũa só parte do mundo_ (D. Francisco de Portugal). Cf. Osorio, writing in Latin, _De Rebus_, p. 4, and Pedro Nunez’ reason for translating his _Libro de Algebra_ into Spanish: _he mais comum_, and the advice given to Luis Marinho de Azevedo to write in Spanish or Latin as _mais geral_ (_Primeira Parte da Fundação, Antiguidades e Grandezas da mvi insigne cidade de Lisboa. Prologo_). Faria e Sousa condemns the practice of writing Spanish _glosas_ to a Portuguese _mote_, and declares that he himself wrote in Spanish _con gran pesar mío_. Frei Antonio da Purificaçam considered that had he written his _Cronica_ in Latin or Spanish _fora digno de grande nota_, in this following Frei Bernardo de Brito, who indignantly rejected the exhortation to use Latin or Spanish (_Mon. Lus._ i, _Prologo_), although he wrote under Spanish rule. Bernarda Ferreira de Lacerda wrote in Spanish _por ser idioma claro y casi comun_. Simão Machado explains why he wrote _Alfea_ in Spanish as follows (f. 72 v.): _Vendo quam mal aceitais As obras dos naturais Fiz esta em lingoa estrangeira Por ver se desta maneira Como a eles nos tratais._

[18] Portuguese spelling is a vexed and vexing question, complicated by the positive dislike of the Portuguese for uniformity (the same word may be found spelt in two ways on the same page both in modern and ancient books; the same person will spell his name Manoel and Manuel). In proper names their owners’ spelling has been retained, although no one now writes Prince Henry the Navigator’s name as he wrote it: Anrique. Thus Mello (modern Melo); Nunez (13th c.), Nunes (19th c.); Bernardez (16th c.), Bernardes (17th-18th c.). The late Dr. Gonçalves Vianna himself adopted the form Gonçalvez Viana. In quoting ancient Portuguese texts the only alteration made has been occasionally to replace _y_ and _u_ by _i_ and _v_.

[19] _Este desejo (de sempre ver e ouvir cousas nouas) he moor que nas outras nações na gente Lusitana._ André de Burgos, _Ao prudente leitor_ (_Relaçam_, Evora, 1557). It is displayed in their fondness for foreign customs, for the Spanish language, for India to the neglect of Portugal, the description of epic deeds rather than of ordinary life, high-flown language as opposed to the common speech (_da praça_), &c. Antonio Prestes calls the Portuguese _estranho no natural, natural no estranjeiro_.

[20] In Spain it has had fervent admirers, notably Gracián. More recently Juan Valera spoke of it as _riquísima_, and Menéndez y Pelayo explored this wealth.

[21] F. Denis, _Résumé_ (1826), p. xx.

[22] Wilhelm Storck, _Luis de Camoens’ Sämmtliche Werke_, Bd. I (1880).

[23] Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple.

[24] For a good instance of this _descuido portugues_ see Manuel Pereira de Novaes, _Anacrisis Historial_ (a history of the city of Oporto in Spanish), vol. i (1912), _Preámbulo_, p. xvii. It is lamented by the editors of the _Cancioneiro Geral_ (1516) and _Fenix Renascida_ (1716).

[25] Portuguese literature begins for most Portuguese with Camões and Barros, and its most charming and original part thus escapes them. Cf. F. Dias Gomes, _Obras Poeticas_ (1799), p. 143: Camões ‘without whom there would have been no Portuguese poetry’; and ibid., p. 310: Barros ‘prepared the beautiful style for our epic writers’. Faria e Sousa’s homely phrase as to the effect of Camões on preceding poets (_echólos todos a rodar_) was unfortunately true.

[26] Much of their finest prose is of lyrical character, personal, fervent, mystic. As to philosophy proper the greatest if not the only Portuguese philosopher, Spinoza, a Portuguese Jew, left Portugal as a child, and Francisco Sanchez (_c._ 1550-_c._ 1620), although probably born at Braga, not at _a soberba_ Tuy, lived in France and wrote in Latin. He tells us that he in 1574 finished his celebrated treatise _Quod nihil scitur_, published at Lyon in 1581, in which, at a time of great intolerance, he revived and gave acute and curious expression to the old theory that nothing can be known. To modern philosophy Dr. Leonardo Coimbra (born in 1883) has contributed a notable but somewhat abstruse work entitled _O Criacionismo_ (Porto, 1912).

[27] Or political, or anticlerical, or anything except literary. The critics seem to have forgotten that an _auto-da-fé_ does not necessarily make its victim a good poet, and that even a priest may have literary talent. A few literary critics, as Dias in the eighteenth, Guilherme Moniz Barreto in the nineteenth century, are only exceptions to the rule. It has been the weakness of Portuguese criticism, more lenient than the gods and booksellers of ancient Rome, to suffer _mediocres_ gladly.

[28] _C. da Vat._ 979 (cf. Jorge Ferreira, _Eufrosina_, v. 5: _como dizia o Galego: de longas vias longas mentiras_).

[29] _Poesias, Sat._ 2. The remark of Garrett still holds good: _Em Portugal ha mais talento e menos cultivação que em paiz nenhum da Europa_.

I

1185-1325

§ 1

_The Cossantes_

Under the Moorish dominion we know that poetry was widely cultivated in the Iberian Peninsula, by high and low. At Silves in Algarve ‘almost every peasant could improvise’.[30] But the early Galician-Portuguese poetry has no relation with that of the Moors, despite certain characteristics which may seem to point to an Oriental origin. The indigenous poems of Galicia and Portugal, of which thirteenth-century examples have survived, are so remarkable, so unlike those of any other country, that they deserve to be studied apart from the Provençal imitations by the side of which they developed. Half buried in the _Cancioneiros_, themselves only recently discovered, these exquisite and in some ways astonishingly modern lyrics are even now not very widely known and escape the attention of many who go far afield in search of true poetry. The earliest poem dated (1189) by D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, in which Pay Soarez de Taveiroos, a nobleman of Galicia or North Portugal, addresses Maria Paez Ribeira, the lovely mistress of King Sancho I, _mia sennor branca e vermelha_, does not belong to these lyrics[31]; but the second earliest (1199), attributed to King SANCHO I (1185-1211) himself, is one of them (C.C.B.348). This unique form of lyric requires a distinctive name, and if we adopt that used by the Marqués de Santillana’s father, Diego Furtado de Mendoza (†1404), we shall have a word well suited to convey an idea of their striking character.[32] His Spanish poem written in parallel distichs, _A aquel arbol_, is called a _cossante_.[33] In an age when all that seemed most Spanish, the _Poema del Cid_, for instance, or the _Libro de Buen Amor_, has been proved to derive in part from French sources, it is peculiarly pleasant to find a whole series of early poems which have their roots firmly planted in the soil of the Peninsula. The indigenous character of the _cossantes_ is now well established, thanks chiefly to the skilful and untiring researches of D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos.[34] They are wild but deliciously scented single flowers which now reappear in all their freshness as though they had not lain pressed and dead for centuries in the library of the Vatican. One of the earliest is quoted by Airas Nunez (C. V. 454) and completed in _Grundriss_, p. 150:

1. Solo ramo verde frolido
Vodas fazen a meu amigo,
E choran olhos d’amor.

2. Solo verde frolido ramo[35]
Vodas fazen a meu amado,
E choran olhos d’amor.

What first strikes one in this is its Oriental immobility. The second distich adds nothing to the sense of the first, merely intensifying it by repetition. Neither the poetry of the _trouvères_ of the North of France nor that of the Provençal _troubadours_ presents any parallel. The scanty Basque literature contains nothing in this kind. But it is unnecessary to go for a parallel to China.[36] None more remarkable will be found than those contained in the books of that religion which came from the East and imposed its forms if not its spirit on the pagans of the Peninsula. Verses 8, 9 of Psalm 118 are very nearly a _cossante_ but have no refrain. The resemblance in Psalm 136, verses 17, 18, is still more marked:

To him which smote great kings,
For his mercy endureth for ever,

And slew famous kings,
For his mercy endureth for ever.

The relations between Church and people were very close if not always very friendly. The peasants maintained their ancient customs, and their pagan jollity kept overflowing into the churches to the scandal of the authorities. Innumerable ordinances later sought to check their delight in witchcraft and mummeries, feasts and funerals (the delight in the latter is still evident in Galicia as in Ireland and Wales). Men slept, ate, drank, danced, sang profane songs, and acted plays and parodies in the churches and pilgrimage shrines. The Church strove to turn their midsummer and May-day celebrations into Christian festivals, but the change was rather nominal than real. But if the priests and bishops remained spiritually, like modern politicians, shepherds without sheep, the religious services, the hymns,[37] the processions evidently affected the people. Especially was this the case in Galicia, since the great saint Santiago, who farther south (as later in India) rode into battle on a snow-white steed before the Christians, gave a more peaceful prosperity to the North-west. Pilgrims from all countries in the Middle Ages came to worship at his shrine at Santiago de Compostela. They came a motley company singing on the road,[38] criminals taking this opportunity to escape from justice, tradesmen and players, jugglers and poets making a livelihood out of the gathering throngs, as well as devout pilgrims who had ‘left alle gamys’ for their soul’s good, _des pélerins qui vont chantant et des jongleurs_. Thus the eyes of the whole province of Galicia as the eyes of Europe were directed towards the Church of Santiago in Jakobsland. The inhabitants of Galicia would naturally view their heaven-sent celebrity with pride and rejoice in the material gain. They would watch with eager interest the pilgrims passing along the _camino francés_ or from the coast to Santiago, and would themselves flock to see and swell the crowds at the religious services. When we remember the frequent parodies of religious services in the Middle Ages and that the Galicians did not lag behind others in the art of mimicry,[39] we can well imagine that the Latin hymns sung in church or procession might easily form the germ of the profane _cossante_. A further characteristic of the _cossante_ is that the _i_-sound of the first distich is followed by an _a_-sound in the second (_ricercando ora il grave, ora l’acuto_) and this too maybe traced to a religious source, two answering choirs of singers, treble and bass.[40] It is clear at least that these alternating sounds are echoes of music: one almost hears the clash of the _adufe_ in the _louçana_ (answering to _garrida_) or _ramo_ (_pinho_). The words of these poems were, indeed, always accompanied by the _son_ (= music). But if born in the Church, the _cossante_ suffered a transformation when it went out into the world. The rhythm of many of the songs in the _Cancioneiros_ is so obtrusive that they seem to dance out of the printed page. One would like to think that in the ears of the peasants the sound of the wheel mingled with the echo of a hymn and its refrain as they met at what was, even then, no doubt, a favourite gathering-place--the mill[41]--and thus a lyric poem became a dance-song. The _cossante Solo ramo_ would thus proceed, sung by ‘the dancers dancing in tune’:

(Verses 3 and 4) Vodas fazen a meu amigo (amado)
Porque mentiu o desmentido (perjurado)
E choran olhos d’amor,

the first line of the third distich repeating the second line of the first (and in the same way the first line of the fifth the second line of the third), in _leixa-pren_ (_laisser prendre_) corresponding evidently to the movements of the dance.[42] The love-lorn maidens danced together, the men forming a circle to look on. St. Augustine considered the dance to be a circle of which the Devil was the centre; in real life the Devil was often replaced by a tree (or by a _mayo_). The refrain was a notable feature of the _cossante_ in all its phases as it went, a _bailada_ (dance-song) from the _terreiro_, to become a _serranilha_ on the hills, or at pilgrimage shrines a _cantiga de romaria_,[43] or a _barcarola_ (boat-song) or _alvorada_ (dawn-song). A marked and thoroughly popular characteristic of the _cossante_ is its wistful sadness,[44] the _soidade_ which is already mentioned more than once in the _Cancioneiros_,[45] and, born in Galicia, continued in Portugal, combined with a more garish tone under the hotter sun of the South. Thus we have the melancholy Celtic temperament, absorbed in Nature, acting on the forms suggested by an alien religion till they become vague cries to the sea, to the deer of the hills, the flower of the pine. The themes are as simple and monotonous--the monotony of snowdrops or daffodils--as the form in which they are sung. A girl in the gloom of the pine-trees mourning for her lover, the birds in the cool of the morning singing of love, the deer troubling the water of a mountain-stream, the boats at anchor, or bearing away _meus amores_, or gliding up the river _a sabor_. The _amiga_ lingers at the fountain, she goes to wash clothes or to bathe her hair in the stream, she meets her lover and dances at the pilgrim shrine, she waits for him under the hazel-trees, she implores the waves for news of him, she watches for the boats _pelo mar viir_. The language is native to the soil, far more so, at least, than in the _cantigas de amor_ and _cantigas de amigo_ written under foreign influence. Their French or Provençal words and learned forms[46] are replaced in the _cossante_ by forms Galician or Spanish. Despite its striking appearance to us now among _sirventes senes sal_ in the _Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti_, it must be confessed that the early _cossante_ of King Sancho has a somewhat meagre, vinegar aspect, and the _genre_ could hardly have developed so successfully in the next half-century had it not been fixed in the country-side, ever ready to the hand of the poet in search of fresh inspiration. It is possible to exaggerate the effect of war on the life of the peasant. Portugal in the twelfth century was only gradually and by constant conflict winning its territory and independence. It had no fixed capital and Court at which the Provençal poets might gather. But while king and nobles and the members of the religious and military orders were engaged with the Moors to the exclusion of the Muses, so that they had no opportunity to introduce the new measures, the peasants in Galicia and Minho no doubt went on tilling the soil and singing their primitive songs. In the thirteenth century Provençal poetry flourished in Portugal, but so monotonously that it failed to kill the older lyrics, and they reacted on the imported poetry. In the trite conventions with which the latter became clothed the _cossante_ had a new opportunity of life. _Trobadores_ wearied by their own monotony, _jograes_ wishing to please a patron with a _novidade_, had recourse to the _cossante_. The _jogral_ wandering from house to house and town to town necessarily came into close touch with the peasants. Talented men among them, prompted by patrons of good taste, no doubt exercised the third requisite of a good _jogral_ (_doair’ e uoz e aprenderdes ben_, C. C. B. 388)--a good memory--not only in learning his patron’s verses to recite at other houses but in remembering the songs that he caught in passing from the lips of the peasants, songs of village mirth and dance, of workers in the fields and shepherds on the hills. These, developed and adorned according to his talent, he would introduce to the Court among his _motz recreamens e prazers_. When Joan de Guilhade in the middle of the thirteenth century complained that _os trobadores ja van para mal_ (C. V. 370), he might almost be referring to the fact that the stereotyped poems of the Portuguese _trobadores_ could no longer compete with the fresh charm of the _cossante_. Alfonso X reproached Pero da Ponte for not singing like a Provençal but, rather, like Bernaldo de Bonaval (first half 13th c.). King Dinis in the second half of the century viewed the _cossante_ with such favour that he wrote or collected some of the most curious and delightful that we possess. But although King Dinis set his name to a handful of the finest _cossantes_, most of the _cossante_-writers belonged to an earlier period and were men of humble birth. Of NUNO FERNANDEZ TORNEOL[47] (first half 13th c.), poet and soldier, besides conventional _cantigas de amor_ we have eight simple _cossantes_ of which the _alvorada_ (C. V. 242), the _barcarola_ (C. V. 246), and C. V. 245 with its dance rhythm are especially beautiful. PEDR’ ANEZ SOLAZ[48] (early 13th c.) wrote a _cossante_ (C. V. 415) celebrated for its refrain, _lelia doura, leli leli par deus leli_, in which some have seen a vestige of Basque (_il_ = dead). Of MEENDINHO (first half 13th c.) we have only one poem, a _cantiga de romaria_ (C. V. 438), but its beauty has brought him fame;[49] and another _jogral_, FERNAND’ ESGUIO[50] (second half 13th c.), is remembered in the same way chiefly for C. V. 902: _Vayamos, irmana_. Bernaldo de Bonaval, one of the earliest Galician poets, and the _jograes_ Pero de Veer, Joan Servando, Airas Carpancho,[51] Martin de Ginzo,[52] Lopo and Lourenço, composed some charming pilgrimage songs in the second third of the thirteenth century. This was a popular theme, but the two poets who seem to have felt most keenly the attraction of the popular poetry and to have cultivated it most successfully are JOAN ZORRO (fl. 1250) and PERO MEOGO (fl. 1250). The _cossantes_ of Zorro, one of the most talented of all these singers, tell of Lisbon and the king’s ships and the sea. In this series of _barcarolas_ (C. V. 751-60) and in his delightful _bailada_ (C. V. 761)[53] he evidently sought his inspiration in popular sources, as with equal felicity a little later did Pero Meogo,[54] whose _cossantes_ (C. V. 789-97), each with its biblical reference to the deer of the hills (_cervos do monte_), are as singular as they are beautiful. MARTIN CODAX at about the same time was singing graceful songs of the _ondas do mar_ of Vigo (C. V. 884-90). But the real poet of the sea was the Admiral of Castille, PAY GOMEZ CHARIÑO[55] (†1295). He belonged to an ancient family of Galicia, was prominent at the Courts of Alfonso X (between whose character and the sea he draws an elaborate parallel in C. A. 256) and of his son Sancho IV, played an important part in the troubled history of the time, and fought by land and sea in Andalucía, at Jaen in 1246 and Seville in 1247. On the lips of his _amiga_ he places a touching _cantiga de amigo_ (C. V. 424: she expresses her relief that her _amigo_ has ceased to be _almirante do mar_; no longer will she listen in sadness to the wind, now her heart may sleep and not tremble at the coming of a messenger) and the two sea _cossantes_ C. V. 401, with its plaining refrain:

E van-se as frores d’aqui ben con meus amores,
idas son as frores d’aqui ben con meus amores,

--one can imagine it sung as a chanty[56]--and C. V. 429, in which she prays Santiago to bring him safely home: ‘Now in this hour Over the sea He is coming to me, Love is in flower.’ Beauty of expression and a loyal sincerity are conspicuous in his poems, as well as a certain individuality and vigour. He escaped the perils of the sea, the _mui gran coita do mar_ (C. A. 251), but to fall by the hand of an assassin on shore. His sea lyrics are only excelled by the enchanting melody of the poem (C. V. 488) of his contemporary and fellow-countryman ROY FERNANDEZ (second half 13th c.), who was apparently a professor at Salamanca University, Canon of Santiago, and Chaplain to Alfonso the Learned. Of the later poets ESTEVAM COELHO, perhaps father of one of the assassins of Inés (†1355), wrote a _cossante_ of haunting beauty (C. V. 321):

Sedia la fremosa, seu sirgo torcendo,
Sa voz manselinha fremoso dizendo
Cantigas d’amigo,

and D. AFONSO SANCHEZ (_c._ 1285-1329) in C. V. 368 (_Dizia la fremosinha--Ay Deus val_) proved that he had inherited part of his father King Dinis’ genius and instinct for popular poetry. King Dinis, having thrown wide his palace doors to these thyme-scented lyrics, would turn again to the now musty chamber of Provençal song (C. V. 123):

Quer’eu en maneira de provençal
Fazer agora un cantar d’amor.

The _cossantes_ had become so familiar that Airas Nunez, of Santiago, could string them together, as it were, by the head, without troubling himself to give more than the first lines, precisely as Gil Vicente treated _romances_ three centuries later. The reader or listener would easily complete them. His _pastorela_ (C. V. 454) would be an ordinary imitation of a _pastourelle_ of the _trouvères_[57] were it not for the five _cossante_ fragments inserted. Riding along a stream he hears a solitary shepherdess singing and stays to listen. First she sang _Solo ramo verde frolido_,[58] then--as if to prove that she is a shepherdess of Arcady, not of real life--

Ay, estorniño do avelanedo,
Cantades vos e moir’eu e peno,
D’amores ei mal,

an impassioned cry of the heart only comparable with

Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth:
Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth;

or that wonderful line of a wonderful poem:

Illa cantat, nos tacemus: quando ver venit meum?[59]

Next she sang the first lines of a _cossante_ by Nuno Fernandez Torneol (C. V. 245) with its dance refrain _E pousarei solo avelanal_. The refrain is identical in C. V. 245 and C. V. 454, but the distich has variations which seem to imply that Airas Nunez was not quoting Fernandez, rather that both drew from a popular source. The fourth _cossante_ we also have complete, a lovely _barcarola_ by Joan Zorro (C. V. 757):

Pela ribeira do rio (alto)
Cantando ia la dona virgo (d’algo)
D’amor:
Venhan as barcas pelo rio
A sabor.[60]

Lastly she (or he), as he rides on his way, sings:

Quen amores ha
Como dormira,
Ai bela fror!

i.e. _este cantar_ which is familiar in the _villancico_ (_Por una gentil floresta_) by the Marqués de Santillana (1398-1458):

La niña que amores ha
¿Sola cómo dormirá?

Very few, if any, of the _cossantes_ were anonymous, which only means that modern folk-lore was unknown; it was not the fashion to collect songs from the lips of the people without ulterior purpose. A variety known as _cantiga de vilãos_ existed, but it was deliberately composed by the _trobadores_ and _jograes_.[61] A specimen is given in C. V. 1043:

Ó pee d’hũa torre
Baila corpo piolo,[62]
Vedes o cós, ay cavaleiro.

No drawing-room lyric, evidently: more likely to be sung in taverns; composed perhaps by a knight like him of C. V. 965, whose songs were not _fremosos e rimados_. Like the Provençal poet Guilherme Figueira who _mout se fetz grazir ... als ostes et als taverniers_, this knight’s songs pleased ‘tailors, furriers and millers’; they had not the good taste of the tailor’s wife in Gil Vicente who sings the beautiful _cantiga_

Donde vindes filha
Branca e colorida?

The _cantiga de vilãos_ was no such simple popular lyric, but rather a drinkers’ song, picaresquely allusive, sung by a _jogral_ who _non fo hom que saubes caber entre ‘ls baros ni entre la bona gen_ but sang _vilmen et en gens bassas, entre gens bassas per pauc d’aver_ (Riquier), _cantares de que la gente baja e de servil condicion se alegra_ (Santillana). The _cossante_, on the contrary, came straight from field and hill into palace and song-book. Probably many of them were composed, as they were sung, and sung dancing, by the women. The women of Galicia have always been noted for their poetical and musical talent. We read of the _choreas psallentium mulierum_, like Miriam, the sister of Moses, at Santiago in 1116,[63] and there is a cloud of similar witnesses. But whether any of the _cossantes_ that we have in the _Cancioneiros_ is strictly of the people or not, their traditional indigenous character is no longer doubtful. It would surely be a most astounding fact had the Galician-Portuguese Court poets, who in their _cantigas de amor_ reduced Provençal poetry to a colourless insipidity, succeeded so much better with the _cossantes_ that, while the originals from which they copied have vanished, the imitations stand out in the Portuguese _Cancioneiros_ like crimson poppies among corn. It is remarkable, too, that of the three kinds of poem in the old _Cancioneiros_, satire, love song, and _cossante_, the first two remain in the _Cancioneiro de Resende_ (1516), but the third has totally disappeared. The explanation is that as Court and people drew apart and the literary influence of Castille grew, the poems based on songs of the people were no longer in favour. But they continued, like the Guadiana, underground, and D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos has traced their occasional reappearances in poets of popular leanings, like Gil Vicente and Cristobal de Castillejo, from the thirteenth century to the present day,[64] while Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos has discovered whole _cossantes_ sung by peasants at their work in the fields in the nineteenth century.[65] Dance or action always accompanies the _cossante_ as it does in the _danza prima_ of Asturias (to the words _Ay un galan d’esta villa, ay un galan d’esta casa_).[66] If it be objected that the songs printed by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos are rude specimens by the side of a poem like _Ay flores, ay flores do verde pinho_, it should be remembered that the _quadra_ (or perhaps one should say distich without refrain) has now replaced the _cossante_ on the lips of the people, and that among these quatrains something of the old _cossante’s_ charm and melancholy is still found. D. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos and others have remarked that these _quadras_ pass from mouth to mouth and are perfected in the process, smoothed and polished like a stone by the sea, and this may well have been true of the earlier _cossantes_.[67] The _jogral_ who hastened to his patron with a lovely new poem was but reaping the inspiration of a succession of anonymous singers, an inspiration quickened by competition in antiphonies of song at many a pilgrimage. One singer would give a distich of a _cossante_, as to-day a _quadra_, another would take it up and return it with variations. The _cossante_ did not always preserve its simple form, or, rather, the more complicated poems renewed themselves in its popularity. We find it as a _bailada_ (C. V. 761), _balleta_ (cf. C. A. 123: _Se vos eu amo mais que outra ren_), as _cantiga de amor_ (C. A. 360 or 361, C. V. 657-60), _cantiga de maldizer_ (C. V. 1026-7), or satirical _alba_ (C. V. 1049). But these hybrid forms are not the true _cossante_, which is always marked by dignity, restraint, simple grace, close communion with Nature, delicacy of thought, and a haunting felicity of expression. The _cossante_ written by King Sancho seems to indicate a natural development of the indigenous poetry. In its form it owed nothing to the poetry of Provence or North France, but its progress was perhaps quickened, and at least its perfection preserved, by the systematic cultivation of poetry introduced from abroad at a time when no middle class separated Court and peasant. The tantalizing fragments that survive in Gil Vicente’s plays show all too plainly what marvels of popular song might flower and die unknown. In spirit the original grave religious character of the _cossante_ may in some measure have affected the new poetry. To this in part may be ascribed the monotony, the absence of particular descriptions in the _cantigas de amor_. In religious hymns obviously reverence would not permit the Virgin to be described in greater detail than, for example, Gil Vicente’s vague _branca e colorada_, and the reverence might be transferred unconsciously to poems addressed to an earthly _dona_. (Only in the extravagant devotional mannerisms (_gongorismo ao divino_) of the seventeenth century could Soror Violante do Ceo describe Christ as a _galan de ojos verdes_.) _Dona genser qu’ieu no sai dir_ or _la genser que sia_ says Arnaut de Marueil at the end of the thirteenth century. The Portuguese poet would make an end there: his lady is fairest among women, fairer than he can say. He would never go on to describe her grey eyes and snowy brow: _huelhs vairs_ and _fron pus blanc que lis_. But introduced into alien and artificial forms, like mountain gentians in a garden, the monotony can no longer please. In the _cantigas de amor_ the iteration becomes a tedious sluggishness of thought, whereas in the _cossantes_ it is part of the music of the poem.

C. A. = Cancioneiro da Ajuda.

C. A. M. V. = Cancioneiro da Ajuda. Ed. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. 2 vols. Halle, 1904.

C. A. S.= Fragmentos de hum Cancioneiro Inedito que se acha na Livraria do Real Collegio dos Nobres de Lisboa. Impresso á custa de Carlos Stuart, Socio da Academia Real de Lisboa. Paris, 1823.

C. A. V. = Trovas e Cantares de um Codice do XIV Seculo. Ed. Francisco Adolpho de Varnhagen. Madrid, 1849.

C. V. = Cancioneiro da Vaticana.

C. V. M. = Il Canzoniere Portoghese della Biblioteca Vaticana. Ed. Ernesto Monaci. Halle, 1875.

C. V. B. = Cancioneiro Portuguez da Vaticana. Ed. Theophilo Braga. Lisboa, 1878.

C. T. A. = Cancioneirinho das Trovas Antigas colligidas de um grande Cancioneiro da Bibliotheca do Vaticano. Ed. F. A. de Varnhagen. Vienna (1870), 2nd ed. 1872.

C. A. P. = Cantichi Antichi Portoghesi tratti dal Codice Vaticano 4803 con traduzione e note, a cura di Ernesto Monaci. Imola, 1873.

C. L. = Cantos de Ledino tratti dal grande Canzoniere portoghese della Biblioteca Vaticana. Ed. E. Monaci. Halle, 1875.

C. D. M. = Cancioneiro d’ El Rei D. Diniz, pela primeira vez impresso sobre o manuscripto da Vaticana. Ed. Caetano Lopes de Moura. Paris, 1847.

C. D. L. = Das Liederbuch des Königs Denis von Portugal. Ed. Henry R. Lang. Halle, 1894.

C. C. B. = Il Canzoniere Portoghese Colocci-Brancuti. Ed. Enrico Molteni. Halle, 1880.

C. M. = Cantigas de Santa Maria de Don Alfonso el Sabio. 2 vols. Madrid, 1889.

C. G. C. = Cancioneiro Gallego-Castelhano. Ed. H. R. Lang. Vol. i. New York, London, 1902.

C. M. B. = Cancionero Musical de los Siglos XV y XVI. Transcrito y comentado por Francisco Asenjo Barbieri. Madrid (1890).

C. B. = Cancionero de Juan Alfonso de Baena. Madrid, 1851.

C. G. = Cancionero General (1511).