Portuguese literature
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