shepherdess. The conventional opening is a description by a knight of his meeting with a shepherdess, "the other day" (l'autrier, the word with which the poem usually begins). A dialogue then follows between the knight and the shepherdess, in which the former sues for her favours successfully or otherwise. The irony or sarcasm which enables the shepherdess to hold her own in the encounter is far removed from the simplicity of popular poetry. The Leys d'Amors mentions other forms of the same genre such as vaqueira (cowherd), auqueira (goose girl), of which a specimen of the first-named alone has survived. Of equal interest is the alba or dawn-song, in which the word alba reappeared as a refrain in each verse; the subject of the poem is the parting of the lovers at the dawn, the approach of which is announced by a watchman or by some faithful friend who has undertaken to guard their meeting-place throughout the night. The counterpart of this form, the serena, does not appear until late in the history of Provençal lyric poetry; in the serena the lover longs for the approach of evening, which is to unite him with his beloved.

Other forms of minor importance were the comjat in which a troubadour bids a lady a final farewell, and the escondig or justification in which the lover attempts to excuse his behaviour to a lady whose anger he had aroused. The troubled state of his feelings might find expression in the descort (discord), in which each stanza showed a change of metre and melody. The descort of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras is written in five dialects, one for each stanza, and the last and sixth stanza of the poem gives two lines to each dialect, which Babel of strange sounds is intended, he says, to show how entirely his lady's heart has changed towards him. The ballata and the estampida were dance-songs, but very few examples survive. Certain love letters also remain to us, but as these are written in rimed couplets and in narrative style, they can hardly be classified as lyric poetry.

In conclusion, a word must be said concerning the dispute between two schools of stylists, which is one of the most interesting points in the literary history of the troubadours.¹⁶ From the earliest times we find two poetical schools in opposition, the trobar clus (also known as car, ric, oscur, sotil, cobert), the obscure, or close, subtle style of composition, and the trobar clar (leu, leugier, plan), the clear, light, easy, straightforward style. Two or three causes may have combined to favour the development of obscure writing. The theme of love with which the chanso dealt is a subject by no means inexhaustible; there was a continual struggle to revivify the well-worn tale by means of strange turns of expression, by the use of unusual adjectives and forced metaphor, by the discovery of difficult rimes (rimes cars) and stanza schemes of extraordinary complexity. Marcabrun asserts, possibly in jest, that he could not always understand his own poems. A further and possibly an earlier cause of obscurity in expression was the fact that the chanso was a love song addressed to a married lady; and though in many cases it was the fact that the poem embodied compliments purely conventional, however exaggerated to our ideas, yet the further fact remains that the sentiments expressed might as easily be those of veritable passion, and, in view of a husband's existence, obscurity had a utility of its own. This point Guiraut de Bornelh advances as an objection to the use of the easy style: "I should like to send my song to my lady, if I should find a messenger; but if I made another my spokesman, I fear she would blame me. For there is no sense in making another speak out what one wishes to conceal and keep to oneself." The habit of alluding to the lady addressed under a senhal, or pseudonym, in the course of the poem, is evidence for a need of privacy, though this custom was also conventionalised, and we find men as well as women alluded to under a senhal. It was not always the fact that the senhal was an open secret, although in many cases, where a high-born dame desired to boast of the accomplished troubadour in her service, his poems would naturally secure the widest publication which she could procure. A further reason for complexity of composition is given by the troubadour Peire d'Auvergne: "He is pleasing and agreeable to me who proceeds to sing with words shut up and obscure, to which a man is afraid to do violence." The "violence" apprehended is that of the joglar, who might garble a song in the performance of it, if he had not the memory or industry to learn it perfectly, and Peire d'Alvernhe (1158-80) commends compositions so constructed that the disposition of the rimes will prevent the interpolation of topical allusions or careless altercation. The similar safeguard of Dante's terza rima will occur to every student.

The social conditions again under which troubadour poetry was produced, apart from the limitations of its subject matter, tended to foster an obscure and highly artificial diction. This obscurity was attained, as we have said, by elevation and preciosity of style, and was not the result of confusion of thought. Guiraut de Bornelh tells us his method in a passage worth quoting in the original—