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.