Stanza 1, line 1. Note the redundant negative; it is characteristic of
mediaeval French, as of all primitive work, that the general suggestion
of doubt is sufficient to justify a redundant negative.
Line 2. _Flora_, etc. It is worth while knowing who these women were.
_Flora_ is Juvenal's Flora (Sat. II. 9), a legend in the university. Of
_Archipiada_ I know nothing. _Thaïs_ was certainly the Egyptian
courtesan turned anchoress and canonized, famous in the middle ages and
revived to-day in the repulsive masterpiece of M. Anatole France.
_Elois_ is, of course, _Heloïse_, and _Esbaillart_ is Abelard. The
queen, who in the legend had Buridan (and many others) drowned, was the
Dowager of Burgundy that lived in the Tour de Nesle, where the Palais
Mazarin is now, and had half the university for a lover: in sober
history she founded that college of Burgundy from which the École de
Médecine is descended; the legend about her is first heard of (save in
this poem) in 1471, from the pen of a German in Leipzig. _Blanche_ may
be Blanche of Castille, but more likely she was a vision of Villon's
own, for what did St. Louis' mother ever sing? _Berte_ is the legendary
mother of Charlemagne in the Epics; _Beatris_ is any Beatrice you
choose, for they have all died. _Allis_ may just possibly be one of the
Troubadour heroines, more likely she is here introduced for rhyme and
metre; _Haremburgis_ is strictly historical: she was the Heiress of
Maine who married Foulque of Anjou in 1110 and died in 1126: an
ancestress, therefore, of the Plantagenets. _Jehanne_ is, of course,
Joan of Arc.
Line 8. _D'Antan_ is _not_ "Yester-year." It is "Ante annum," all time
past before _this_ year. Rossetti's "Yester-year" moreover, is an absurd
and affected neologism; "Antan" is an excellent and living French word.
Stanza II, line 2. Note the pronunciation of "Moyne" to rhyme (more or
less) with "eine": the oi, ai and ei sounds were very similar till the
sixteenth century at earliest. They are interchangeable in many popular
provincialisms and in some words, _e.g._, Fouet, pronounced "Foit" the
same tendency survives. The transition began in the beginning of the
seventeenth century as we learn from Vaugelas: and the influence towards
the modern sound came from the Court.